





BS 2415 .D64 1926 
Douglas, Lloyd C. 1877-1951. 
These sayings of mine 


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THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 









THESE SAYIX 
OF MINE 


AN INTERPRETATION OF THE TEACHINGS 
OF JESUS 


BY, 
LLOYD C.“DOUGLAS 


AUTHOR OF “THE MINISTER'S EVERYDAY LIFE” 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1926 


COPYRIGHT, 1926, By 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 





Printed in the United States of America 





TO MY MOTHER 


AT WHOSE KNEE I FIRST HEARD 
THESE SAYINGS 





FOREWORD 


AN unusual tide of interest has been flowing, 
of late, concerning the teachings of Jesus. 

Unprecedented problems, arising out of recent 
startling changes in men’s mental habits and 
ways of living, seem to demand our quest of a 
more adequate guidance than is offered by the 
self-confessedly troubled leadership of this gen- 
eration. 

It is not that we lack confidence in the zeal 
or sincerity of our contemporaneous religious 
counsellors, for we believe them to be good and 
thoughtful men, every way entitled to our full 
respect. Whatever of anxiety has been felt 
about the clearness of their vision and the au- 
thority of their opinions originated with them 
quite in advance of being entertained by us. 
Of one thing, however, they are all sure, no 
matter how uncertain they may be about other 
things—and upon this one thing they are all 
agreed, no matter how widely separated they 
may be in everything else—we must get back to 
Christ. 

Middle-aged men of to-day who were bred in 
the country or in small towns will remember 
how we learned to write by attempting to imi- 
tate a line of faultless script at the top of the 

Vil 


Vill FOREWORD 


page in the copy-book. There were so many as 
a dozen blank lines to the page, topped with 
the ideal which we were asked to emulate. Our 
first line was not a bad imitation of the pattern. 
We were close to the model then, with no low- 
grade work interposed between what we were 
doing and what our teacher had done. True, it 
was lamentably imperfect, but the general slant 
of it was at about the same angle as the teach- 
er’s work; and, while we were not proud of it, 
we secretly reflected that it might be a great 
deal worse, which was true—as we were about 
to prove. 

The second line was not so good. We were 
farther from the pattern now, and our own 
previous bungle was in the way. Indeed, as we 
started line three, we wondered whether we 
were not really copying our own sad mistakes. 
On line four, we thought to remedy matters by 
introducing a few ornamental curlycues into the 
capital letters and feathering the tails of the 
““9’s” and “‘y’s,” hoping to distract the teacher’s 
attention from our blunders and gain some 
credit for an honest effort to make our work 
less unbeautiful. 

But by the time we had reached the bottom 
of the page, we were growing careless; for the 
monstrous difference between what we were do- 
ing and what the teacher had done was so ap- 
palling that discouragement set in to make the 
final disaster complete and hideous. We were so 


FOREWORD 1X 


far removed from the ideal, at the top, that we 
could not even approximate it. Obviously, the 
only cure for our trouble was to get back, some- 
how, to the pattern. 

In many respects our present predicament, in 
attempting to follow Christ, is about the same 
as this copy-book experience. Between us, of 
this generation, and the Man of Galilee, stands 
an imposing array of more or less unsuccessful 
efforts to do his will. The page is smeared and 
blurred with men’s crude endeavors to express 
the lofty sentiments trusted to them as perfect 
models of conduct and character. Between us 
and him there is a miscellaneous clutter of the 
irrelevant and obscuring—blots and blunders 
scrawled there by many generations of well- 
meaning but fallible men. 

It has been abundantly proved that no sys- 
tem of religion can hope for survival—much less 
for success—without an adequate recognition of 
enough ceremonialism and sacramentalism to 
endow it with the mystical appeal so necessary 
to its acceptance by the human spirit and to 
insure it the sort of tradition which makes for 
continuity from one age to another. 

But, however understandingly we may accept 
and practise these rites and ceremonies, the me- 
chanics of them do have a way of interfering 
with our view of the ideal pattern, in its simplic- 
ity and perfection. Even as we were tempted, 
as children, to offer a little free-hand art in our 


3 FOREWORD 


copies of the model at the top of the page—so 
excellent in its absolute simplicity—we have 
been disposed to let stoles and surplices, incense 
and rosaries, amens and hallelujahs, lecterns and 
altar-cloths, holy days and solemn feasts, water, 
bread, wine, cups and platters, glorias and ben- 
edictions, serve as embellishments to disguise 
the elemental blunders we were committing in 
our awkward attempts to follow the copy 

This is not to deride these sacred properties 
and emblems of historic Christianity. We live 
in an algebraic world where certain concrete 
signs and symbols must ever stand for certain 
abstract and abstruse ideas and ideals. The 
symbol loses its value only when it obscures the 
ideal instead of illumining it. Vestments and 
liturgies are of high significance up to the very 
point where a debate arises over whose vest- 
ments are the more nearly correct and whose 
liturgy is the more nearly authoritative. The 
usefulness of all such things leaves off at the 
exact point where contention about them takes 
on. 

If we are to get back to Christ, clearly the 
way is not over the path of tradition in the field 
of zsthetics; seeing how far we have come, and 
through Hite many phases this development of 
zestheticism has passed since Jesus announced, 
one noon, beside a well in Samaria: “‘God is a 
Spirit.” 

We must expect to find—if we really mean 


FOREWORD x1 


what we say about our desire to get back to 
Christ—a religion free of any trappings, furni- 
ture or holy implements. This does not mean 
that we are to proceed, in this generation, with- 
out rite or ritual, church buildings or church 
traditions. We cannot very well get along with- 
out such things, for they all visualize facts for 
us. But if it is the unadulterated Galilean Gos- 
pel that we think we need these days, let us be 
aware that the bulk of our ecclesiastical observ- 
ances have shut us off from a clear view of that 
message, instead of opening a way to it. 

Everybody who knows anything about the 
history of religion appreciates the fact that there 
must be statements of faith, creeds, and confes- 
sions, for the same reasons that political states 
must-have constitutions and business organiza- 
tions must have charters. New conditions of liv- 
ing may require that political constitutions be 
amended, and new circumstances in business 
may make new charters necessary; but it is im- 
portant that there shall be certain beliefs, aims, 
and objectives clearly set before any social group 
endeavoring to make common cause of a definite 
ideal or a concerted task. No fault is to be 
found with the fact that the Christian Church 
has formulated creeds. 

But with whatever reverence we may regard 
these documents, they, too, have often obscured 
the Galilean model; not so much, perhaps, by 
their actual declarations as in the astounding 


xi FOREWORD 


amount of elemental fact about Jesus’ message 
which they left undeclared. In the most an- 
cient, most authoritative, and most widely ac- 
cepted creed of Christendom, there is nothing 
between Jesus’ being “born of the Virgin 
Mary,” and his having “suffered under Pontius 
Pilate,’ but a comma. There is a serious omis- 
sion here—an omission which leaves the impres- 
sion that the only noteworthy events in Jesus’ 
life were his birth and death. It is doubtful if 
the creed will rediscover for us those principles 
which, we believe, could redeem the social order 
from its present plight. 

Herein resides a strange situation, in view of 
the fact that the Master thought and talked of 
himself as a teacher and invariably addressed 
his followers as “‘disciples’’—a word which had 
the exact value that the word “student” has 
with us. It is strange, in the light of the fact 
that he staked his whole ministry upon his 
teachings which, he declared, were divinely com- 
municated to him, that practically the entire 
emphasis of the church should have been placed 
upon his nativity and his tragedy. One doubts 
if this could have been his wish, for he was quite 
insistent that it was his message he wished to 
leave. “Heaven and earth shall pass away; 
but my words shall not pass away.” ‘‘Whoso- 
ever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth 
them—” “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the 
flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak 


FOREWORD xi 


unto you, they are spirit and they are life.” Ok 
ye continue in my word, then are ye my disci- 
ples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and 
the truth shall make you free.” Open the Gos- 
pels at random, and you will find spread before 
you some statement of the Master’s relating to 
the high importance of his message—and not 
much wonder that he was so insistent about 
this, for “‘as my Father hath taught me, I speak 
these things.” 

Who will attempt to explain this apparent 
conspiracy among all the cultural agencies in 
and adjacent to the Christian Church to reduce 
the whole career of Jesus to its earthly beginning 
and end? A cursory glance at ecclesiastical art 
—so largely responsible for shaping public 
thought about Jesus—reveals the astonishing 
fact that almost every great picture finds him 
either in his mother’s arms or dying on his cross. 
One wishes to say it reverently, but one must 
say it strongly, that when the Lord Christ does 
contrive to project his message into the minds 
of Christians, he has literally to fight his way 
past his baby pictures. This is not quite fair to 
a great teacher. No other eminent teacher in 
the world’s history has fared so badly, nor Soc- 
rates, nor Plato, nor Aristotle, nor any other. 
Great teachers deserve to be remembered for 
their teachings, and most of them are—all of 
them are, but the greatest of all. 

Sometimes I have wished—much as I delight 


X1V FOREWORD 


in what the Christmas story means and has 
meant to the imagination of the Christian world 
—that the first sight a potential believer might 
have of Jesus would be the introduction Mark 
gives him in that first and most important of the 
Gospels; or, if not that, perhaps the first glimpse 
of him should be on the occasion of his rising, 1n 
the little synagogue of Nazareth, where he reads 
his favorite passage from Isaiah: ‘‘The spirit of 
the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed 
me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath 
sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach 
deliverance to the captives, to set at liberty the 
bruised.” 

It is not difficult to understand why thought- 
ful men should be urging our return to Christ. 
Of course, there is nothing unique about this 
summons. Paul advised it, in his generation, 
with as much earnestness. Far-seeing Christian 
leaders of every age have counselled it. But, 
while it would be incorrect to say of our gen- 
eration that the idea had originated with us, it 
is true that we have extraordinary reasons for 
hoping and wishing this to come to pass. This 
is not the place to call the roll of those reasons. 
Mere mention of the bewildering surge of a new 
and audacious anarchy, exhibited in unexpected 
quarters; the wholesale flouting of law and 
order; the alarming abrogation of certain long- 
held beliefs and conventions in the field of com- 
mon morality; the terrifying increase of crime 


FOREWORD XV 


among half-grown boys; the careless contempt 
for venerable institutions; the tendency of 
democracies to degenerate into mere clamorots 
mobocracies, until it is a matter of debate 
whether the magical word “‘liberty” has not be- 
gotten more problems than it has solved; the 
break-up and bafflement of insolvent political 
states, ruined through costly efforts to preserve 
their so-called honor—mere mention of these 
conditions is enough. If Christianity is to solve 
these problems, it is time we found out exactly 
what Jesus taught. 

It may be presumed that most people are 
agreed on this, and that the only point of dif- 
ference in our opinion is in the matter of tech- 
nic. We all want to get back to Christ. How 
shall we do it? 

One suggested method is the ‘‘revival.” But 
that is not taking us back toward Christ much 
farther than the days of our own great-grand- 
fathers. This is not to indict that procedure at 
all. There can be no question but men have had 
their lives completely transformed through such 
response to an emotional appeal; and any pro- 
cedure that makes people over and sends them 
forth with a new purpose is beyond the reach of 
sneers. But the “revival” is able to work these 
transforming miracles only upon a distinctive 
group of persons whose emotions are readily on 
call. It leaves stolidly unstirred an unaccount- 
able number who cannot be reached that way, 


Xv1 FOREWORD 


who have no equipment for reacting to such an 
appeal. 

Moreover, its hypotheses have to do mainly 
with the salvation of the individual. Its social 
message is inadequate. It is utterly impotent 
to deal with the most serious problems of our 
time. If it should be contended, by apostles of 
this school of thought, that our problems might 
be solved if men would submit themselves to 
the technic they recommend, one is forced to 
reply that this method will not be practicable 
until its major premise is stated in some more 
convincing mood than the subjunctive. 

Another proposed method of getting back to 
Christ starts with the theory that men are not 
sufficiently informed about Jesus’ life and deeds. 
Unquestionably the world would be much the 
better if a larger number of people knew the full 
story of that life from Bethlehem to Golgotha. 
But, for present purposes, as between knowing 
either everything he did or everything he said, 
it is more important that we should have his 
words. 

It is pursuant to that belief that this little 
book endeavors to make an interpretation of 
Jesus’ sayings. As most of his precepts were 
deduced from parables, it is natural that such 
a work should deal with these stories at some 
length and in detail. Commonly, the parables 
are spoken of as “simple, homely little tales of 
humble life.’ It is to be doubted if, in the 


FOREWORD XV 


whole field of literature, sacred and secular, one 
is likely to encounter any proposition more com- 
plicated, thought-provoking, and thoroughly 
mystifying than is involved in these “simple” 
parables. Whoever thinks they are simple 
should spend a few hours with one of them, and 
discover that what he thought was a little one- 
room house is only the vestibule to an inter- 
minable labyrinth. 

There has been no attempt to present these 
parables as complete units: that is, there is not 
a chapter on “The Prodigal” and another on 
“The Talents.”’ Sometimes a half-dozen para- 
bles will be grouped as of a definite order, and 
to be studied in relation to one another. One 
chapter attempts to deal with the parables 
clearly addressed to the adolescent mind. An- 
other presents a group of parables spoken to the 
disciples alone. It will be observed that the 
author is endeavoring to show how Jesus, hav- 
ing proclaimed himself “the light of the world,” 
leads his disciples gradually into a consciousness 
of their trusteeship in civilization, ultimately 
delegating certain rights and powers to them in 
his declaration: ‘Ye are the light of the world.” 

Doubtless many readers will wish there had 
been some foot-notes, giving scriptural refer- 
ences and bibliography. Others will be glad to 
find the book uncluttered with any research 
machinery. Unable to please both types, I have 
satisfied myself. There are no references, but 


ht hp enti as 


eS a 


XVIII FOREWORD 


the original source of information is not far to 
seek. 

There has been left out of this book every- 
thing that might be considered controversial. 
This is not to mean that the author has no con- 
victions about certain matters now ardently de- 
bated by Christian leaders, but that there is 
enough elemental truth in Christ’s message— 
absolutely beyond the reach of contention—to 
save the whole social order from its present 
blunders. It is that elemental truth we have 
neglected, while tithing mint, anise, and cum- 
min, and staging impressive forensic battles 
over matters which, one suspects, will never be 
settled to general satisfaction—debates which, 
in very many instances, have been mere quar- 
rels with the dictionary. 

We are agreed that the gospel of Christ can 
save the world. Let us make an honest effort to 
find out what that gospel is, and see whether it 
is able to prescribe for the problems of this sec- 
ond quarter of the twentieth century. 


Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of 
mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise 
man, which built his house upon a rock. And the 
rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds 
blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not; 
for it was founded upon a rock. And every one 
that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them 
not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which 
built his house upon the sand. And the rain de- 
scended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, 
and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great 
was the fall of it. 


HG MAST Cen ce i 
PMO RE ty ARYL hh rei 
hi ana petite Ath 


Mite tute 1b 


ee J 
Pr 
# N RAan NEY, 
Leet 





CONTENTS 


PIU IVA Lo tens) acy aura yes riiARe salt Fe 06!)) Oa eraran Vill 
CHAPTER 
I. “I Am THE Licut oF THE WorRLD”’ . I 
Toe Y Ee AREMMYI FRIENDS! IF 2 he Uo 387 
Ill. “Many Are CALiep, BuT Few ARE 
AGETOB ERK Tene eae UUM neeaT ies taints bla 62 
Vee HIM LHAT SNOCKETH al ile aban 4, 


V. “Unto WHoMsoEVER Mucu Is GivEN” 109 


VL “Seek Ye First THE Kincpom’ '. ). 127 
MilteWay ARE YELP RARFUL SS fe) uit kil S3 
VILE wo WHATSOEVER, YE) WOULD”) ).)).) 2): 179 

Le NTRATT 1S) THE, GATE, 4150) leon: 198 


X. “Ye Are THE Licut oF THE WoRLD” 209 





THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


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CHAPTER I 
“1 AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 


ATE in the reign of Augustus Czsar there 
| fig appeared in the least valuable of his un- 
important Palestinian provinces an itin- 
erant prophet, who calmly and confidently said 
of himself that he was the light of the world. 
To all outward seeming no man ever had less 
warrant to utter so startling a declaration, for 
which there was lacking even such frail author- 
ization as might be conferred by church or state. 
Born in a stable and reared in a village carpen- 
ter-shop, possessed of no influential friends, edu- 
cational advantages, or any broadening contact 
with the outside world; with no money in his 
pocket and no credentials in his hand, this man, 
trailed by a dozen unlettered fishermen and 
farmers, whom he had invited to accompany 
him, announced to his countrymen that he was 
the light of the world. And nobody smiled. 
Only a small minority accepted the astound- 
ing phrase at its face value, and of this minority 
but few even made pretense of understanding its 
implications. His little retinue of disciples some- 
times thought they comprehended the full 1m- 
port of these words; but the difficulty they ex- 
I 


2 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


perienced in retaining their grip on this tremen- 
dous idea is evident from the record which as- 
serts that on the very eve of his crucifixion, the 
Nazarene was still endeavoring to explain to the 
bewildered group of men who had shared his 
friendship and his poverty the peculiar nature 
of his mission and the uniqueness of his message. 
He did not berate them for their inability to un- 
derstand. They only did credit to their honesty 
and sincerity when, even at that latest moment, 
they propounded queries disclosing the extent 
of their perplexity. 

Certain contemporary wiseacres, invited by 
their neighbors to express an opinion concerning 
the young preacher, declared that he was pos- 
sessed of a devil—the current vernacular for in- 
sanity. Others denounced him as a sacrilegious 
scoffer. But nobody dismissed his case with a 
shrug or an airy gesture of indifference. The 
charge that he was “beside himself” did not sat- 
isfy the public. Neither was it contented with 
the priests’ verdict that the strange Galilean 
was a scoffing impostor with an itch for popu- 
larity. He had made no demands looking toward 
personal profit. He had attempted no organiza- 
tion, had proposed no mass-movements, had in- 
cited no rebellion. It was an indisputable fact, 
in the opinion of the laity, that he had no selfish 
ends to serve. 

Great multitudes followed him from village to 
village. The hoe was dropped in the garden, the 


“T AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 3 


flail was tossed aside on the threshing-floor, the 
basket was left half-empty in the vineyard, and 
the forge-fires died, while their humble custo- 
_dians trudged for miles, through the heat and 
dust, to hear the new prophet who had captured 
the imagination of his countrymen. 

Because all this occurred at a time which an- 
tedated journalism, there is a minimum of 1m- 
pressionistic comment, in the gospel literature, 
concerning the mind and mood of the typical 
crowd that gathered to listen to these addresses. 
Beyond the statement that the people were 
astonished at his teaching, the profound impres- 
sion created by Jesus’ sermons must be deduced 
from the fact that thousands followed him, not 
infrequently at serious inconvenience. That no 
conscious effort was ever made to stage these 
great meetings in such a manner as to call out 
large attendance, is revealed by the statement 
that on one occasion, at least, the Master delib- 
erately attempted to avoid a crowd by crossing 
the lake in a boat to a desert place where, a lit- 
tle later, the throng found him and demanded 
an address. 

There must have been a strange fascination in 
his speech, both as to manner and matter. No 
one cross-section of society felt it less keenly 
than the others. It is said that the common 
people heard him gladly; but that his audiences 
were not composed exclusively of common peo- 
ple is shown by the frequency with which other 


4 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


groups are mentioned whose interest in his mes- 
sage seemed greater than their reluctance to be- 
come part of a conglomerate multitude. His 
precepts were usually illustrated by original 
parables dealing with the rudimentary facts of 
common life; but his words were not too ele- 
mentary for Nicodemus or too profound for 
Nathaniel. 

Although the world of that day was an insti- 
tution intended primarily for adults, little chil- 
dren are much in evidence throughout this story 
of the Man of Galilee. Tiny tots wriggled their 
way through the crowd, and fearlessly clustered 
about him. Customarily, in any exchange of 
amenities between an adult stranger and a young 
child, the initiative arises with the former, and 
considerable persuasion is usually necessary to 
induce the normal child to venture upon an un- 
tried acquaintance. It is reported that the Gali- 
leans had to defend Jesus—or thought they had 
to—from the voluntary attentions of their little 
folk, in the face of his assurance that the chil- 
dren did not annoy him. 

It is to be suspected that there was a peculiar 
relationship between the Nazarene and little 
children which has not received enough atten- 
tion at the hands of students. With their inher- 
ited hates not yet brought to noxious flower, 
with no cultivated prejudices to climb over, with 
no credal walls to scale, with nothing but in- 
stinct to guide them, these children not only 


“Tl AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 5 


approached Jesus in full confidence but with a 
mysterious capacity for understanding. And 
one is disposed to believe that his attitude 
toward them was not merely that of adult pat- 
ronage, caressingly toying with their curls and 
smiling benignly into their wondering eyes, but, 
rather, an expression of deep respect for these 
little ones who, because of their lack of general 
misinformation about life, were so much better 
able than their seniors to comprehend his teach- 
ings. 

Social outcasts, venturing to brook the con- 
tempt of the multitude, elbowed their way into 
his presence. This was not an easy thing to do. 
The typical Jewish crowd was quite self-con- 
scious on the subject of its respectability. The 
unfortunate who had earned public disapproba- 
tion knew better than to obtrude himself upon 
an assembly of the Chosen, for a Hebrew throng 
was not beyond stoning an undesirable whose 
presence lowered the moral tone of the event 
that had convened it. 

But these hapless wretches threw discretion — 
to the winds when Jesus spoke. There seemed a 
chance, even for them, in the adoption of a pro- 
gramme of life which demanded a clean break 
with a sorry past and a triumphant facing of a 
radiant future. They had become accustomed 
to censure, hardened to accusations, stolid under 
invective and abuse. The Hebrew language was 
rich in the phraseology of vituperation, and they 


6 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


had heard it all. Every day somebody was odi- 
ously comparing his own abundant righteous- 
ness with their shameful lack of it. But here was 
a moral mentor who, making no discrimination 
between the self-admittedly righteous and the 
self-confessedly sinful, demanded of all a com- 
plete re-appraisal of life’s imperatives—a change 
of attitude equivalent to a second birth. 

Naturally, the lure of this call to a new life 
met a much readier response in the breast of the 
man who was conscious of having registered a 
total failure than in him whose self-satisfaction 
was disclosed in his every tone, posture, and ges- 
ture. 

Many respectable people were frankly disap- 
pointed when Jesus accepted invitations to dine 
with persons who had recetved—and probably 
not without warrant—public chastisement or 
disfavor. It was clear that Jesus was making no 
endeavor to surround himself with an exclusive 
clientele. Community leaders who asked him 
into their homes were taught to expect that 
presently the dooryard would be filled with a 
miscellaneous aggregation of rags on crutches 
and tatters in disrepute, to whom he would be 
as courteously disposed as toward his hosts. 

On one occasion a reformed woman, whose 
trade had not trained her to be reticent, auda- 
ciously entered an eminently respectable home, 
where Jesus was being entertained at dinner, and 
showered him with the contents of a costly vase 


“1 AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 7 


of rare perfume. Quite a scene ensued. It was 
an embarrassing moment for all present, except 
the principals. The woman’s satisfaction in hav- 
ing accomplished her act of gratitude loomed 
too large in her mind to admit of any self- 
reproach for the intrusion, or chagrin over the 
indignation of the party. She had accepted the 
new formula for triumphant living; and, in an 
ecstasy of joy over the first full realization of her 
great discovery, she was willing to go to any 
length of adventure to show her appreciation. 
How she may have come by the expensive per- 
fume is not stated, but any active imagination 
will find here all the materials for the construc- 
tion of a richly dramatic event. 

Jesus accepted the situation with dignified 
courtesy. One would think, from his manner, 
that an experience like this was “‘all in the day’s 
work.” It might be natural to assume that this 
questionably-arrived-at spikenard would be an 
intolerable reek in the sensitive nostrils of one 
to whom anything less than spotless chastity 
was an abhorrence. But Jesus did not divest 
himself of his aromatized robe, or ask for the 
loan of another. He seemed grateful for the 
tribute. What the woman had done, in an im- 
pulsive outburst of appreciation, would be told 
and retold as long as his programme of life was 
taught in the world, he said; and truthfully 
enough. At all events, we are retelling it yet, 
and considerable time has elapsed. 


3) THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


Jesus’ respectable friends, however, no matter 
how magnanimous they wished to be in their 
attitude toward his disregard of the austere con- 
ventionalities, never understood his sympathetic 
tolerance of publicans and sinners. Clearly, the 
only way to keep the delinquent in order was to 
frown upon his misbehavior. What was to be- 
come of society, indeed, if publicans and sinners 
were able to boast to their betters that their 
questionable hospitality was quite as good, in 
the opinion of a recognized moral leader, as that 
of the self-conceded saints of the community ? 
Nor was this an unpardonable query. Life 
would soon become practically unlivable, for 
any social group the world over, if moral turpi- 
tude were permitted to go unrebuked by the 
powers responsible for public decency and in- 
tegrity. 

It will have to be borne in mind that Jesus’ 
attitude of sympathetic interest in the social 
outcast was not founded upon any mere senti- 
mental condonement of immorality, or a non- 
chalant indifference to the problem of delin- 
quency, but was rather in pursuance of his hope 
to show his contemporaries how little difference 
existed, after all, between the pretended right- 
eousness of the scribes and Pharisees and the 
candid lawlessness of the publicans and sinners. 
In the judgment of his new standard for ideal 
living, there was nothing to choose between 
them; and he could express his sentiments on 


“I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 9 


this subject no more effectively than by accept- 
ing the hospitality of these social outlanders on 
exactly the same terms as he became the guest 
of the publicly esteemed. 

It is not to be supposed, however, that Jesus 
neglected his opportunities to bring immoral 
persons face to face with the precise truth about 
themselves. How seriously he must have talked 
to the grafting little Zaccheus, with whom he 
dined, may be imagined from the fact that this 
diminutive tax-collector volunteered to restore 
to each person he had defrauded four times the 
amount of the peculation. And if candor seems 
to be lacking from the inquisition Jesus con- 
ducted for the benefit of the Samaritan woman, 
whom he met by chance at Jacob’s well, it is 
surely the fault of the reader. 

There must have been a searching penetration 
in the eyes of Jesus—a penetration capable of 
stripping a man stark naked of his official vest- 
ments and cultivated pretenses. So strikingly 
does this quality invest his recorded words that 
one finds it easy to understand how it must have 
affected the people who heard him utter them. 
That the face of Jesus did not wear a stern or 
menacing expression is evident from the fact 
that little children edged their way closer about 
his feet until he was surrounded by them. This 
may have been because their untutored in- 
nocence matched his experienced purity. But 
adults who came into direct contact with his 


10 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


gaze invariably noted the frightening disparity 
between their character and his. When they 
voiced their sensations, their observation was 
variously phrased, according to the individual’s 
temperament and culture. The rich young ruler 
and the wise old lawyer inquire, with emotion: 
“What shall I do?” An unsophisticated fisher- 
man more crudely expresses the same thought 
when, upon meeting Jesus for the first time, he 
growls, roughly: “Depart from me; for I am a 
sinful man!” ; | 

Nor was this peculiarity of Jesus’ personality 
remarked only by men who appear in the Gospel 
record as his friends. His enemies felt it, too. 
Spies, hired by the established priesthood to 
trail the Nazarene and, if possible, to entangle 
him in argument and bring back adverse reports 
of his addresses, returned to the temple to con- 
fess that nobody had ever talked like this man. 
When pressed by their employers to be more 
specific, they could only assert that he spoke as 
one authorized. By whom or from whence this 
evident authority had been derived they did not 
offer a conjecture. They were only sure that he 
was different. No scribe had ever spoken in this 
manner. 

No one of his contemporaries, however, either 
friend or foe, was in a position to comprehend 
the full significance of his words. His country- 
men were quite too close to him to see him 
clearly. Not even Peter or James or John, who 


“T AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 11 


knew him best, was able to view his teachings 
in their larger reaches. It required the acid of 
Time to etch out all the local, incidental, tem- 
porary, and irrelevant details from that picture 
of life lived supremely. And although the pres- 
ent-day Christian may be justified in singing, 
“‘T wish I had been with them then,”’ it is un- 
questionably true that in the face of history 
and civilization’s increasing experience of the 
remarkable rightness of his teachings, we mod- 
erns may accept his declaration—‘“‘] am the 
light of the world !”—with more understanding 
than they who actually heard him speak these 
words. | 

There are good reasons for believing that each 
successive generation has less excuse than its 
immediate predecessor for exhibiting any reluc- 
tance to accept Jesus on the terms of his own 
self-appraisal. 


Il 


While it is not strictly within the province of 
this study to examine the supernormal aspect 
of Jesus’ sayings—for our inquiry hopes to con- 
cern itself chiefly with their practical bearing 
upon present-day problems—any serious inves- 
tigation of the Master’s precepts leads inev- 
itably toward this subject, inasmuch as these 
trenchant sayings stand forth in high relief 
against any other lore, ancient or modern. 


12 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


The distinction which must be made between 
Jesus’ and any other’s ethical code is not a spe- 
cific difference, like that which exists between an 
aster and a chrysanthemum. It is not a mere 
difference of beauty or dimension, like that 
which distinguishes the receiving vault in a vil- 
lage cemetery from the Taj Mahal. It is, rather, 
a generic difference, like that which exists be- 
tween an oak and a seaweed. It is a categorical 
difference, far wider than the gulf between the 
bust of Pericles and a text-book on ceramics. 
The deliverance of any one of these other moral 
codes was either but a local incident, of impor- 
tance to a given era and area, or lacked any 
uniqueness which might serve to identify it 
from the cult whence it had been derived. 

When we thoughtfully approach these say- 
ings of the Galilean teacher, we find ourselves 
concerned with something greater than a ‘‘wis- 
dom literature,’ such as the justly venerated 
Solomonic proverbs, the Davidic injunctions, 
the golden words of Marcus Aurelius, or the 
august Confucian maxims. All these ancient 
codifications of ethics are so clearly designed to 
serve the thoughts and regulate the conduct of 
a certain racial type, living in a given epoch, 
that they are now preserved mostly as objects 
of interest in morality’s museum. We are hap- 
pily surprised when, despite their antiquity, 
we discover therein some principle of practical 
availment in our modern lives. The sagacity of 


“Tl AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 13 


a Hebrew king who, thirty centuries ago, ad- 
vised the sluggard to study the habits of the 
ant, prompts us to laudation of his wisdom. In 
precisely the same mood, however, we gaze upon 
an ancient weapon in a reliquary, remarking to 
our friend that it is not such a bad sword, even 
if it was made away back in the Elizabethan 
days. 

Were Jesus’ sayings to have been presented 
to humankind in the form of an open letter, that 
communication would require neither address 
nor date. His comments on the conditions under 
which life must be accepted might have been 
uttered five thousand years ago or the day be- 
fore yesterday; in southern Galilee, or east 
Cornwall, or North Carolina, or west Africa. 
The translation of them, from one language to 
another, has not affected their beauty or deplet- 
ed their force. They dealt with life’s rudiments. 

Only the more introspective of an exclusive 
caste would ever expect to derive much help 
from the mystical considerations of Buddhism; 
and, as for adapting it to the occidental mind, 
it is hopeless to the last outpost of absurdity. 
Constantly we are reminded by philologists that 
no one can be expected to appreciate fully the 
beauty and strength of the orations of Cicero 
and Demosthenes unless he reads them in the 
language wherein they were delivered. The cul- 
tured Moslem insists that the Koran is at a 
heavy disadvantage when conveyed through 


14 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


any other medium than Arabic. By magnani- 
mously conceding this to be true, one who is not 
conversant with Arabic will find it easier to un- 
derstand how the compositions of the famous 
camel-driver might presumably command the 
intellectual respect of Islam. 

Not only are the sayings of Mohammed diff- 
cult to transport through an alien tongue; they 
do not appear to thrive, even in their native 
language, when carried into a fully civilized 
country. In one of our greater mid-Western 
cities, possessing a large foreign population, a 
group of broad-minded philanthropists resolved 
to build a mosque, in the belief that it would 
prove a source of help and happiness to the 
Moslems who had come to make that place their 
future home. Only a handful ever came into 
that place of worship, and even they did not 
come very long. After a futile effort to encourage 
these people in the conservation of their native 
religion, the promoters abandoned the experi- 
ment. Whatever Mohammedanism may have 
meant to these people back in Turkey, it lacked 
either the reach or the grip to hold them in 
Michigan. It would be as difficult to put a 
newly hatched chicken back into its shell as to 
reconstruct for the Moslem on American soil the 
religious environment and the spiritual values of 
his symbols and sacraments, apparently so deeply 
venerated by him previous to his migration. 

Without meaning to minify the service any 


“IT AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 15 


other religion than Christianity has rendered to 
its disciples, it is obvious that the teachings of 
Jesus stand alone in the universal capacity of 
their appeal; and however respectful the broad- 
minded student may be in his attitude toward 
the founders of other faiths, it is apparent that 
the world at large never considered the advent 
of any one of them as of sufficient importance to 
require the opening of a new calendar, saying: 
“We will begin again. This shall be known as 
Day First, of Year One!” 

Perhaps the most spectacular fact to be pred- 
icated of Jesus’ sayings at the present hour re- 
lates to their immutability. It was no rhetori- 
cal extravagance when he said: ‘‘ My words shall 
not pass away.” Not only do they exhibit no 
signs of passing away, but they require no mod- 
ification. To say this of any cultus whatsoever 
in the twentieth century is equivalent to placing 
it in a category prepared for its exclusive occu- 
pancy. We can well afford to linger for a while 
in the vicinity of this thought; for here 1s some- 
thing quite too important to be taken for grant- 
ed and passed by heedlessly. 

The changes registered by our modern times 
in every field of scientific and philosophical in- 
quiry have been so radical that a man, return- 
ing from any previous century, would hardly 
recognize any fact or force with which he had 
had to do. 


No sooner does any scientific crusade pitch 


16 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


its banner on an imagined summit of the hill it 
had laboriously scaled than the dissolving mists 
permit a view of another more precipitous grade 
to be climbed. Surely, no other group of pil- 
grims have had more right or reason to say, 
when asked for their home address: “‘Here we 
have no continuing city.” 

Doubtless the layman, who makes no pre- 
tense of keeping informed even on the more 
startling advents of these new theories which 
from time to time reduce the value of certain 
scientific text-books until they are worth no 
more than they will fetch per pound at the junk- 
shop, will appreciate best the nature of these 
thought-1 innovations by considering the proces- 
sion of theories in the development of modern 
medicine and surgery. 

So intriguing is this story that it is with the 
utmost resolution we turn from the temptation 
to rehearse it all, beginning in the remote days 
of magical brews, prophylactic and remedial, 
deduced from bats’ wings and toads’ tongues. 
The case can be made, however, more briefly. 
Men now in their forties have seen the treat- 
ment of certain prevalent diseases changed as 
far as the East is from the West. Maladies once 
seeming to demand that the patient be starved 
now require feeding. A formerly fatal disease 
that enjoined the patient to be shielded from 
the air and from exercise, to extend by a few 
months the period of his inevitable decline, now 


“Tf AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 17 


forces him out in all weathers, with at least a 
tentative promise of recovery. 

Latter-day pathology suspects that the first 
President of the United States actually lost his 
life at the hands of well-meaning blood-letters. 
It was in a time when the surgeon—who was 
significantly called a leech—felt that any sick 
was in better case if relieved of some surplus 
blood, no matter what ailed him. As we enter 
the second quarter of the twentieth century 
transfusion is as commonly invoked as was 
bleeding in the last quarter of the eighteenth 
century. It is only a little while since medical 
men first recognized the importance of “surgical 
cleanliness” in the aseptic treatment of all le- 
sions. There were only five clinical thermome- 
ters in the whole Army of the Potomac, and the 
first book on clinical thermometry was published 
quite within the lifetime of men still actively 
engaged in the practice of medicine. 

Diagnosis of pathological conditions within 
the thoracic and abdominal cavities, made by 
the X-Ray photograph, has been but high-class 
guesswork, or, at least, coincidental verification 
of previous conjectures on the part of the diag- 
nostician, until a few months ago, when the in- 
troduction of the stereoscopic principle to the 
reading of such plates added a third dimension 
to the perspective, and thus promoted this type 
of diagnosis to an honored place among the ex- 
act sciences, 


18 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


Until recently the microscope was little more 
than an interesting toy, helpful to botanists and 
other naturalists. For ages it progressed very 
little. A magnifying glass with a focal length of 
nine diameters was found in the ruins of Her- 
culaneum. It was almost as strong as the micro- 
scope in use during the Presidency of Thomas 
Jefferson. Then a new discovery of the physi- 
cists introduced more light into the instrument, 
capable of counteracting the increasing opacity 
of a heavier lens, thus lifting the whole device 
at once into an estate of such usefulness that its 
disclosures revealed a hitherto undreamed-of 
microcosmic world, inviting researches in bac- 
teriology, with the consequent relief of civiliza- 
tion from certain age-old plagues and pestilences 
whose very names had made kings tremble. 

To linger over the dramatic tale of the appli- 
cation of such energies as electricity to the ex- 
panding requirements of modern life—each ad- 
vancement made through the dethronement of 
some hard-and-fast hypothesis, and the accept- 
ance of a new one—is to review what every 
schoolboy knows. In all fields of human knowl- 
edge changes are now being effected, without 
tardiness or protest, attesting to the scientist’s 
magnitude of mind in that he is willing, at any 
time, to discard a cherished and apparently 
“immutable” theory for another undeniably 
better. 

So rapidly have these changes come to pass 


“I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 19 


in these latter years that we are quite accus- 
tomed to altering our views quickly and without 
chagrin. No advocate is required to plead the 
case of the couplet: “‘New occasions teach new 
duties: Time makes ancient good uncouth !”’— 
for of no previous generation could it be said 
that men’s minds were so receptive as ours to 
fresh evidence concerning the world in which 
we live, the conditions under which life may be 
spent most happily and effectively, and human 
energy brought to its maximum capacity. 
These things being true, no generation has 
ever been in a position to appreciate so fully as 
ourselves the uniqueness of a body of wisdom 
delivered nearly twenty centuries ago by one 
untaught even in the elementary philosophy and 
crude scientific inquiry of his day; a body of 
wisdom composed by one who spent his brief 
life in the obscure provinces of an effete coun- 
try, quite off the highway of commerce and the 
arts; whose people were so enmeshed in a maze 
of restrictions that they were even inhibited 
against making any disclosures of their genius 
and imagination through the chisel or brush, 
who never invented anything that would ease 
men’s backs of their physical burdens, whose 
only boast was the vanished glory of their na- 
tion’s past, and whose chief aversion was any 
hint of innovation, either in motive or manner; 
a body of wisdom which, at this long reach of 
nearly two thousand years and seven thousand 


20 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


miles, is regarded, at this hour, by the world’s 
more progressive civilization as the last word 
on the subject of perfect living. 

Here is something that may not be easily ex- 
plained. During the last three centuries, which 
register the greatest discoveries and the most 
rapid advancement of our social order, while 
every other field of thought and action has 
undergone revolutionary changes, nobody has 
had the inclination or audacity to suggest any 
amendment to, or deletion from, this Galilean 
programme of life. It has proved as adaptable 
to the modern Occidental, rejoicing in his 
democratic liberties, his industrial ingenuity, his 
charted globe newly mapped from pole to pole, 
his fluoroscope, airplane, radio, and radium, 
as it was to the ancient Oriental, ploughing his 
outworn soil with a crooked stick, grinding his 
meal in a mortar, and dreamily wondering what 
lay beyond the immediate horizon of his sta- 
tionary world. 

The only criticism ever launched against this 
ethical code of Jesus, by any responsible per- 
son, is the objection that it is quite too lofty in 
conception to be more than feebly approximated 
by the average human—a charge which consti- 
tutes as high a compliment as may be paid to 
any theory, whether in the realm of the physical 
or metaphysical. 

This one fact alone, that this body of wisdom, 
known as the sayings of Jesus, has neither re- 


“TI AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 21 


quired nor experienced any change throughout 
the course of civilization’s emergence from the 
mental and moral degradation prevalent two 
millennia ago to its present state of enlighten- 
ment, should lead any normal mind to suspect 
the supernatural character of these teachings. 
If by the word “miraculous” one designates 
that which may not be satisfactorily explained on 
natural grounds, then these sayings of Jesus not 
only belong in the field of the “miraculous,” 
but unquestionably head the list of all the in- 
explicable wonders before which the reverent 
and inquiring mind now stands in awe. 


III 


Upon arriving at this decision, however, we 
find ourselves but crossing the outer threshold 
of this baffling mystery; for, not only has this 
body of wisdom required no change through the 
ages, but certain of its hypotheses have only re- 
cently been permitted to function at anything 
like capacity, leading one to suspect that civ- 
ilization’s increasing demands in the future will 
disclose many practical values, still unrecog- 
nized, in the maxims of the Man of Galilee. 

For centuries certain admonitions of Jesus 
were obeyed—when they were obeyed—for the 
sole reason that the Christian thereby hoped to 
meet the conditions governing his admittance 
into a celestial world of peace and joy. But the 


oo THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


time came when it was apparent to civilization’s 
leaders that, however meritorious such observ- 
ances might be in assuring immortality to the 
individuals who practised them, human society 
would be obliged to obey these regulations to 
insure itself against disaster. 

To feed the hungry, house the homeless, and 
minister to the sick was found to be considerably 
more than the earning of moral credits to be de- 
posited to the spiritual account of Christians in- 
terested in their souls’ survival in another world. 
These tasks, as civilization’s problems became 
more and more complex, were seen to be abso- 
lutely imperative to the welfare of the social 
order in this present life. Hungry and homeless 
people constituted a heavy liability to any com- 
munity. Sick people furnished a problem more 
immediate than the providing of certain benev- 
olent and sympathetic persons with a heaven- 
earning obligation. To deal more humanely 
with the imprisoned, whom long-established cus- 
tom flung 1 into mouldy dungeons to die of scurvy 
and insanity, was more than a pious injunction 
laid upon the faithful devotees of a religious 
cult. It was a stern economic necessity. 

How long commerce haggled over its split- 
penny dickerings, each merchant cautious 
against tipping the scales, ever so slightly, in his 
customer's favor, before it was discovered that 

““vood measure, pressed down, shaken together, 
and running over,” is a principle of mercantile 


“lt AM. THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 23 


success! Many generations were to pass, after 
those words were first spoken, before the world 
of barter and trade awoke to the fact that the 
secret of commercial success is good measure. 
The soundness of this theory is seen in the re- 
wards of its practical application, whenever and 
wherever it is tried. Frequently, men who had 
struggled along, ashamed of their failures to 
achieve anything either in material property or 
personal satisfaction, have literally made their 
lives over by adopting this principle of tipping 
the scales in favor of the customer. The work- 
man who has his labor to sell remembers the day 
with pleasure that marked his resolve to invest 
a margin of effort in his task, above that actually 
required of him. He finds that it is the labor, in 
excess of the work for which he had contracted, 
that leads to his advancement in the esteem of 
his employer and his promotion to positions of 
trust befitting his capacities. The professional 
man now understands that his success depends 
upon his willingness to do for his client, or his 
patient, or his patron, a little more than the law 
exacts. 

Only in recent times has this principle, enun- 
ciated so long ago along the shores of Lake 
Gennesaret, found acceptance as a sound eco- 
nomic theory. Whereas formerly it was consid- 
ered one of the more difficult of the “imprac- 
ticable” teachings of Jesus, any man who now 
disputes its working value merely announces his 


24 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


candidacy for defeat at the hands of a genera- 
tion which has learned that it is the margin of 
work and interest that guarantees prosperity. 

It may confidently be believed that oa 
sayings of Jesus, still ignorantly considered “‘1 
practicable” and ‘‘visionary,” will ere long come 
into their own. Perhaps the most difficult of 
these teachings, to the modern mind, was his 
pronouncement on the subject of “non-resist- 
ance.” In the private relations of individuals 
throughout civilized society this principle is ob- 
served to a greater extent than ever before. And 
now that we have achieved such dreadful tools 
of militancy that the complete annihilation of 
whole cities, hundreds of miles from a seat of 
war, is not only possible but probable, in the 
event of another clash between the scientifically 
advanced nations, it may be presumed that we 
must either adopt the Master’s ‘‘impracticable” 
peace-programme or bid for the utter demoli- 
tion of present-day civilization. 

We therefore find the sayings of Jesus not 
only presenting a changeless code of prescribed 
human action, requiring neither amendment nor 
revision to suit the demands of any age or 
country, but offering solutions to social prob- 
lems which civilization now tardily considers, 
after having adventured unsuccessfully with 
every other way, over a stretch of two thousand 
years. Whoever can explain this on natural 
grounds has every right to do so. The fact that 


poe vie re bIGH TORS THE WORLD” 25 


such explanation has not been offered to the sat- 
isfaction of thoughtful men leads one to the be- 
lief that these sayings of Jesus constitute a body 
of wisdom supernormally delivered, and that no 
doubt may reasonably be entertained that the 
Master, in proclaiming himself “‘the light of the 
world,” defined his relation to humanity in 
terms which, for truth and clearness, could not 
have been surpassed. 


IV 


In attempting to arrive at a satisfactory work- 
ing phrase to comprehend the sayings of Jesus, 
we have been referring to them as “‘a body of 
wisdom.” ‘This arbitrary designation, tempo- 
rarily used in default of a better one, will no 
longer suffice, now that we have reached the con- 
clusion indicated above. If this ethical code has 
been supernaturally delivered, we must now deal 
with it as something greater than a literature. 
It must be conceived of as anenergy. Nor is this 
dificult to do when it is remembered that the 
kinetic power of these sayings has become imme- 
diately felt in the promotion of a new culture 
and the creation of increased liberties wherever 
it has gone. 

One of the peculiar functions of this energy is 
its capacity to set men free. It may be imagined 
that in some primitive social group two neigh- 
boring families had long regarded each other 


26 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


with suspicion and distrust. The heads of these 
houses lived in mutual fear and hatred. Neither 
dared leave his cave, to hunt, fish, or adventure 
beyond hailing distance, lest the other do him 
and his some injury. By common agreement, 
after an extended reign of terror, these people 
resolved upon a programme of definite rights 
and obligations whereby each was permitted to 
go his way in peace, unharassed by the fear that 
his unguarded property might be in jeopardy. 

This new freedom, arrived at through a com- 
pact built upon mutual trust, meant more to 
these liberated men than the mere extension of 
their physical boundaries. Now that the mental 
strain of hatred and suspicion was lifted, there 
came a new attitude toward life. ‘There was an 
urge toward the development of inventive in- 
genuity, self-expression through the graphic arts, 
music, and the drama, the desire to build ob- 
jects of beauty, and an inclination to quest the 
Source of their new-found aspirations. 

The freedom granted by this energy involved 
in the teachings of Jesus is the next step in altru- 
ism beyond mutual trust. By its injunctions 
one does not merely consent to leave one’s 
neighbor’s haunch of venison undisturbed, in 
his absence, in consideration of the neighbor’s 
promise not to steal one’s axe. This was about 
as far as Confucianism was able to go in recom- 
mending more harmonious social relationships. 
Leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone. Keep 


“I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 27 


your hands off my stuff, and I promise to do the 
same by you. The sayings of Jesus begin with 
the assumption that everybody who knows 
anything at all has discovered that human life 
would be utterly intolerable under any other pro- 
gramme than such mutual confidence as this. 
He starts his new code exactly where the others 
had left off, and proposes an original command- 
ment—‘‘that ye love one another!” 

It is interesting to observe the effect of this 
freedom, arrived at through the acceptance and 
practice of this principle. So marked is the re- 
sult of it that the world-tourist needs not be in- 
formed, as he travels, which countries are under 
the influence of this energy, or to what extent; 
for the fact will be fully evidenced in the very 
faces of the people he sees. It shows up in their 
Carriage, manners, tone of voice, and whether 
or not their shrubbery is trimmed and their 
window-boxes are filled with flowers. And if any 
one is disposed to question whether this energy 
has had anything to do with the advancement 
of the human race, he might make the experi- 
ment of drawing a free-hand map of the world, 
indicating in red ink such areas of it as may be 
classified as civilized. He will discover when 
he is done that he has also drawn a map of 
Christendom. 

Should he conclude, upon surveying his find- 
ings, that the close association of Christianity 
and civilization is purely coincidental, he has 


28 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


only propounded a query to himself quite as im- 
possible to answer as any of the bafHing ques- 
tions he may have encountered in his attempt 
to account for this energy on natural grounds. 

It should be borne in mind that we are not 
now employing this word “energy” in any 
rhetorical sense, such as one invokes when 
speaking of the “language” of the flowers or the 
“majesty” of a sequoia. The sayings of Jesus 
constitute an energy as real and dynamic as 
electricity! It might be added, however, that 
no social group in this world has ever come into 
a practical understanding of the uses and bene- 
fits of applied electricity until it had first felt 
the impact of that other greater energy with 
which our study is concerned. The genius to 
discover great physical energies and adapt them 
to human needs never has an opportunity to 
function until it has been set free of its stultify- 
ing fears. Only freemen contribute anything to 
civilization. And that is why one of the greatest 
benefits conferred by the sayings of Jesus is the 
liberating power of their truth. Wherever this 
energy is applied, it is exactly as if a flood of 
light had suddenly been turned on! Old fears 
and superstitions scurry out as the illumination 
increases. Men can see new duties, new joys} 
new reasons for living in harmony, by the light 
generated from this energy. 

A recent essay deploring the tardiness of or- 
ganized religion to adjust itself to scientific dis- 


“I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 29 


coveries asserts that Christianity has been by 
far the very worst opponent of such advance- 
ment. The essayist was correct in saying that 
the Church has frequently put itself in the way 
of scientific progress. In that far the Church 
was misguidedly interfering with the advance- 
ment of humanity. It was not the sayings of 
Jesus that stepped in the way of progress, but a 
temporarily mistaken Church, manipulated by 
men of inflexible mind. Be that as it may, 
the significant fact 1s reached when the essay- 
ist declares that the other religions have not 
been such grave offenders. Brahminism has 
not stoned its physicists. Buddhism has not 
jailed its chemists. Mohammedanism has never 
brought a skilled biologist to the block. Shinto- 
ism never burned a man for announcing a great 
discovery in the field of science. Only the 
Church of Jesus Christ has made such terrible 
blunders as this. And why is that? Because 
physicists are not produced under the influence 
of Brahminism! Brahminism never bred any 
Newtons, Galileos, or Columbuses! Moham- 
medanism never had a chance to say what atti- 
tude it ought to take toward a Laplace, or a 
Faraday, or a Watt, or a Pasteur, or a Crookes, 
or a Marconi, or a Wright! It is only Christian- 
ity that has ever been called upon to pass on the 
rightness or wrongness of some new application 
of a physical force. The Jesus energy has to 
make its way, first, in any social group, before 


30 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


the members of that group are sufficiently re- 
lieved of their primitive fears and standardized 
dulness to be on the alert for discoveries. The 
exceedingly practical man may be disposed to 
say of this, smilingly: “‘But no text-book on 
physics includes this ‘Jesus energy.’”? An ap- 
propriate and truthful reply might set forth the 
fact that but for this “‘ Jesus energy” there would 
be no text-books on physics! 


V 


In view of all this, we may study with fresh 
interest the Master’s unqualified confidence in 
the soundness and wonder-working capacity of 
his own teachings. There was never any ques- 
tion in his mind about the everlasting rightness 
of them. He knew, and admitted, that some of 
them were so completely at variance with the an- 
cient and conventional beliefs of men that the 
introduction of them would amount to revolu- 
tion. He knew, far better than his traducers, 
who said at his trial that he was a disturber of 
the peace, how thoroughly upsetting to the old 
tyrannies these teachings would be, once they 
had been brought to the world’s attention. 

An hour came in this Master’s career when 
even his sworn friends considered the new cultus 
a lost cause. Surely, if anything was ever to be 
judged by purely circumstantial evidence, the 
mission of Jesus came to an inglorious end. But 


“Tl, AM. THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 31 


when he went to the cross—by all human reck- 
oning defeated—it was with martial step; for, 
however appearances that day were unfavorable 
to his cause, he knew that he had planted some- 
thing in the soil of society that nobody would 
ever be able to dig up! Like leaven in meal, a 
strange catalyzing energy had been introduced 
into the spiritual chemistry of civilization. It 
was his soul, his mind, his life! He was confi- 
dent, even as death filmed his eyes, that this in- 
destructible element was already at its task of 
transformation. That catalysis had already set 
in! Nothing now could ever stop it! 

It mattered very little to him that he had 
been whipped and slapped through the streets 
of Jerusalem; that he had been manacled and 
reviled; for every added indignity that day only 
brought forth increasing evidence that he had 
succeeded in presenting a highly potential en- 
ergy to the world. 

Not for nothing had the established priest- 
hood adjourned the most solemn and time-hal- 
lowed rite of their religion to recognize the im- 
portance of what he had been teaching. Not for 
nothing had the provincial government of Cesar 
taken notice of his cause. They had nailed him 
to a cross—these official representatives of the 
most honored religion and the most powerful 
empire in the world, and had declared his case 
a closed incident. But it was not an incident; 
and it would not stay closed. They could impale 


22 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


him and his revolutionary Golden Rule to a 
cross and watch the blood drip out of him and 
it; but not for long! 

When the crowds along the Via Dolorosa shed 
bitter tears as he passed, staggering under his 
shameful load, he said: ‘“You need not weep for 
me!” Nor was his refusal to be pitied to be 
accounted for as a sudden flare of martyr’s valor. 
He meant it, in very truth. He knew that he 
had finished his work. ‘To all seeming, the to- 
tal results of his mission could be called nothing 
less or else than complete failure; but Jesus 
knew that he had laid hold upon life at its most 
sensitive neural plexus; that he had gripped 
humanity’s trunk-nerve ! 

In that seemingly pitiful moment, as he died, 
he freely forgave his persecutors. “They know 
not what they do,” said he. It was true. Had 
they known, they would not have done it. For 
whereas, up to that hour, this new ideal had 
been a localized aspiration, that went about in 
the keep of a certain individual, now it was re- 
leased. Now it was free to go its way. Now it 
was a thing that had wings at the top and roots 
at the bottom. Any chance breeze would carry 
it and any soil would reproduce it. So it was 
borne, by slave-galley and barge and caravan, 
to the outposts of civilization; and then, not 
content with the sluggish pace of mystics who 
carried it for its own sake, the new ideal took 
passage with the pioneers and adventurers, rid- 


“T AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 33 


ing with them across uncharted seas, over track- 
less deserts, and through unblazed forests, until 
it had girdled the world! 

It spread until the story of its founder was 
known in countless homes wherein the far-flung 
fame of Alexander, Plato, and the Czsars had 
never received so much attention as a single 
syllable of scorn. It spread until the names of 
the squalid little hamlets through which he had 
walked on his errands of mercy were household 
words among multiplied thousands who had 
never heard of Athens or Memphis or Phoenicia. 
It spread until even the humble fisher-folk who 
had trudged at his side in Galilee were figures 
to be enshrined in marble by the world’s master 
sculptors. 

Religion and government had put him to 
death as a disturber of the peace. No man then 
living survived long enough to realize just how 
great a disturber of the peace he was; but he 
knew. He knew that the world would never be 
the same after that day. He knew that he had 
set in motion certain forces so dynamic that 
any man who tried to thwart them would do 
so at his peril. The new ideal had all the solid- 
ity and permanence of a block of granite. Men 
who fell upon that stone would be broken— 
broken in spirit and able to rise over their dead 
selves to higher things; but upon whomsoever 
that stone should fall, he would be ground to 
powder! Behind that cornerstone was an en- 


34 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


ergy! Jesus sometimes called it his “kingdom.” 
He knew that this kingdom would become a lift- 
ing, driving, kinetic force ! 

Whoever finds in these statements a mere 
rhetorical exuberance, can give himself an in- 
teresting hour by making an attempt to delete 
Jesus from our present life. If it is suspected 
that the poets and prophets have sentimentally 
overrated the Master’s importance to civiliza- 
tion, let the critic put this overestimated teacher 
where he belongs by dropping his name and all 
allusions to his career from his own speech. Let 
him resolve that he will consistently refuse to 
enter any building in which there is an ascrip- 
tion of honor to this teacher; that he will not 
again look upon any statue or painting which 
has to do with this man or his message; that he 
will avoid hearing any music which involves this 
theme; that he will not read any more history in 
which the cause of Christianity is at issue. Let 
him proceed further and discontinue the use of 
any benefits, inventions, or energies produced 
as a direct result of education fostered by Chris- 
tianity. 

He will discover that long before he has fin- 
ished deleting Jesus from his life he has jeopard- 
ized everything he holds in esteem. Pontius 
Pilate, in an uncomfortable moment of perplex- 
ity, inquired of the crowd that sought Jesus’ 
life: “What, then, will ye do with Jesus?” This 
query seems to echo through the centuries. Of 


eho a Dre hIGH Th OR THEO WORLD? 3c 


course, any individual who stolidly refuses to 
recognize the question can contrive to live his 
whole life without giving it his attention; but 
only as a pensioner upon the people who do 
recognize it as worthy of a reply. No social 
group, however, can evade this query and con- 
tinue to advance. Their answer to it will deter- 
mine whether they propose to live in the fog of 
ignorance and enslavement to fear, or in the 
light of increasing knowledge and the liberty 
which knowledge confers; for Jesus is the light 
of the world! 

It is recorded of him, by men who surely had 
nothing to gain in this world by perjury and 
everything to lose in a world to come—an estate 
vastly more important to them than any earthly 
consideration—that so powerful was his person- 
ality and so complete his understanding of hu- 
man problems that he brought physical restora- 
tion to many of his countrymen by a mere word 
or a touch of his hand. 

This might be very difficult to believe had we 
not already accepted the far greater mystery in- 
volved in the eternal energy which motivates 
his teachings. It does not happen to lie within 
the scope of our present study to investigate 
these recorded works of the Master. But, as the 
greater includes the less, any man who has ap- 
praised the sayings of Jesus thoughtfully, recog- 
nizing in them the principles which alone can 
save the world from its blunders of ignorance, 


36 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


cowardice, prejudice, and doubt, will decide that 
not only might it have been true that the poor 
woman who timidly touched the hem of his robe 
was restored to health and happiness, but that 
it would have been impossible for her or any 
one to have touched him and ever to have been 
the same again. 


CHAPTER II 
“YE ARE MY FRIENDS IF—” 
S* inseparably associated in the Christian’s 


mind are the teachings of Jesus and the 

unique personality of their author, that the 
acceptance of his programme of life, as a stand- 
ard of faith and conduct, is customarily known 
as “accepting Christ.” There is no fault to be 
found with this phrase, inasmuch as Jesus en- 
couraged his disciples to consider his person and 
his message as indistinguishably related. 

When he invited men to conform their lives 
to his ideal for triumphant living, he said: 
“‘Come unto me.” When asked by the twelve 
to tell them how they might rejoin him in his 
spiritual abode, he replied: “‘I am the way.” 

That the peculiar nature of this identification 
of the messenger and his message is without 
precedent or imitation is abundantly proved by 
the fact that every other advocate known to 
forensic history has sought to magnify his cause 
by deprecating his unworthiness to serve as its 
ambassador. One of the favorite devices of the 
pleader who would present a new or unpopular 
issue is to seek common ground with his audi- 
tors by bridging the gap between his personality 
and theirs, either by deferentially compliment- 

a7 


38 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


ing them, in the manner of Mark Antony, or by 
stressing his own insufficiency, as did Paul, who 
so frequently adverted to his physical defects, 
his inability as a public speaker, and his unfit- 
ness to act as an attorney for a movement of 
such vast import. 

We have no record of any attempt on the 
part of Jesus to exalt his message by self-depre- 
cation. He and his words were one. They had 
been supernormally conveyed to him, he de- 
clared, and he was the living exponent and ex- 
ample of their truth. Whoever accepted his 
teachings, accepted him. Whoever accepted 
him, accepted them. There could be no such 
thing as an effective practice of his principles 
independent of a close and vital relation to his 
personality; and, in pursuance of that relation- 
ship, he said: ‘‘Ye are my friends if ye do what- 
soever I command you.” 

So thoroughly is this premise interwoven with 
the admonitions of Jesus that it is small wonder 
the Christian world has had so much to say con- 
cerning the necessity of friendship with him, and 
has laid so great stress upon the personal atti- 
tude of the believer toward the author of his 
faith. 

How this friendship is to be sought and won, 
and by what tokens the Christian may be as- 
sured of its possession, is a subject to which we 
must turn before we investigate further the na- 
ture of his commandments, seeing what large 


DA NOY) ER RIN DS), TR? 39 


importance is attached to our personal appraisal 
of the Master as guide and friend. 

Our study of this relationship will be clarified 
by eliminating, first of all, such overtures as we 
might be disposed to make toward him, which 
promise no help. In this process of elimination 
we may discover that we are discrediting a few 
of the prevalent beliefs of Christians who have 
relied upon certain untenable sophistries to bring 
them into spiritual contact with Jesus. 

The first fallacy to be observed, in an unsuc- 
cessful attempt to establish relations of friend- 
ship with him, is the apparent belief in the minds 
of many people that he likes flattery and may 
be appealed to with lavish expressions of lauda- 
tion. Any one who really wishes to know how 
little he esteemed ascriptions of praise, offered 
by persons misguidedly believing that their 
deference to him might count in their favor, 
whether they obey him or not, will find his 
words clear enough on that point, in which he 
declares: ““Not every one that saith unto me 
‘Lord ! Lord !’ shall enter into the kingdom; but 
he that doeth the will of my Father.” Nor was 
this the statement of a purely hypothetical case. 
That they were already offering him obeisance 
in lieu of obedience is indicated by his query: 
“Why call ye me ‘Lord,’ and do not the things 
that I say?” 

He asked them to follow him, to strive to be 
like him, to obey him; but the record fails to 


40 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


disclose any hint of a suggestion that they praise 
him. No desire of his seemed stronger than his 
longing for friends who would make common 
cause with him by obeying the precepts which 
he knew offered so much of happiness, security, 
and peace. And, surely, if it was friendship that 
he desired, one finds it difficult to understand 
how such a relation could ever be arrived at, 
had he assumed a regal attitude, demanding a 
mental state of self-abasement and sycophancy 
on the part of an acquaintance whose love he 
sought. We may have a King Jesus or a Friend 
Jesus; but we may not have both. This is not 
to dispose of the majesty of his person. So con- 
stantly does Jesus speak of his ‘‘kingdom,”’ that 
we must not lose sight of his royalty; but we 
must keep it in mind that this ‘‘kingdom,”’ as 
he remarked to Pilate, ‘‘is not of this world.”’ 
There is no evidence that Jesus expected or 
received from his twelve disciples the kind of 
adoration that savored of court. The spectacle 
they made on that last night in Gethsemane, 
when the three closest friends he had in the 
world slept while he prayed for courage and 
slept again after he had roused them with a 
heartbreaking appeal for the support of their 
alert sympathy, is sufficient to dispose of any 
idea that might be entertained of a relationship 
between them like that of a king to his subjects. 
Approached on the highway by a wealthy 
young man, for whom he instantly conceives a 


“YE ARE MY FRIENDS IF—” 41 


personal fondness, Jesus rebukes him for making 
use of an ascription of praise. “Why callest thou 
me ‘Good Master’?” he asked. “If thou wilt 
enter into life, keep the commandments !” 

Upon one occasion a woman pronounced a 
tender eulogy upon the body of the mother who 
had given him birth and ascribed praise to the 
breasts that had nourished him in infancy. He 
heard her; and, much as this touching reference 
to his mother must have moved him, he replied: 
“Yea, rather blessed are they that hear the 
word of God, and keep it.” 

These facts are of great importance to our 
correct thinking about the Christian’s relations 
to Jesus, in the face of an ecclesiastical tradition 
which certifies that almost from the very begin- 
ning of its organization as a religious: system, 
unto the present hour, the Church has placed 
emphasis upon our adoration of Christ as a 
king, unfortunately to the obscuration of him 
as a personal friend. 

It was only a little while until the woman’s 
fulsome tribute to Jesus’ mother—which he had 
attempted to readjust to its proper position of 
secondary importance to the blessing deserved 
by all obedient disciples—had become one of 
the most conspicuous features of the Church’s 
liturgy. 

Our present task is not to minify the impor- 
tance of a reverential gratitude to Jesus, or in- 
differently to regard the spiritual value of a 


42 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


sincere appreciation of the high benefits which 
have been conferred upon us through him. For, 
nothing that we can possibly say to him or about 
him, in expression of our devotion to him as 
guide and friend, will exceed his rightful due or 
our manifest obligation. But when our eulogy 
and eloquence have taken precedence over our 
obedience and practical discipleship, our praise 
becomes a mere impertinence, and our worship 
a mockery. 


IT 


Friendship with Jesus—to consider another 
prevalent delusion about this relationship—is 
not arrived at through our letter-perfect knowl- 
edge of his biography. In our ordinary friend- 
ships, it is quite conceivable that a man may 
rejoice in the close and stimulating comradeship 
of some contemporary whose career, until one 
happened to meet him, is practically unknown. 
Where and how he may have spent his youth, 
under what circumstances he received his edu- 
cation, what may have been his experience of 
travel—of all this one may be ignorant. The 
real concern of a friendship is, rather: What 
have these people to contribute to each other 
now? 

It is not to be wondered at that the earnest 
Christian should find delight in informing him- 
self, as fully as possible, concerning the life of 


“YE ARE MY FRIENDS IF—” = 43 


Jesus. This is not only his privilege, but his 
duty. And after we have investigated thor- 
oughly the documents which bear testimony to 
his deeds, his journeys, his every recorded move- 
ment, from the manger to the cross, it is only 
natural that we should regret the brevity of 
these accounts. We wish that the Gospel of 
Mark contained sixty-one chapters instead of 
sixteen. 

But, after all has been said about the high im- 
portance of our full acquaintance with the biog- 
raphy of Jesus, it is entirely possible for one to 
be able to recite, with verbal exactitude, the 
sum total of the memorabilia concerning him 
and yet fail utterly to enter into the relation of 
friendship. 

Sometimes it seems that our case 1s strikingly 
like that of the Pharisees, who punctiliously 
studied the ancient documents of the earlier 
prophets, hoping to derive spiritual help from 
the monotonous task they had set for them- 
selves—piously intoning, hour by hour, the so- 
norous words of the seers, yet with no endeavor 
to make these admonitions bear fruit in their 
daily conduct. To them Jesus said: “Ye search 
the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have 
eternal life. Ye would not come unto me, that 
ye might have life!” 

Because it is so very much easier to teach 
geography than altruism, our religious instruc- 
tion, as provided by the educational department 


44 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


of the average church, introduces Christianity 
to the little child by placing before him a relief 
map of Palestine. Presently he will be able to 
identify the Sea of Galilee, which, he has learned, 
is about thirteen miles long by four miles wide, 
subject to sudden gales, its shores thickly popu- 
- lated on the south and west, a desert country 
bounding it on the east. All this is very interest- 
ing to know, but it is not the main issue if the 
intent of the church school is to present Jesus 
as the world’s light. In the face of this misplaced 
emphasis in our religious education, which deals 
so minutely with the national history of the 
Hebrews, with the topography of the Holy 
Land, and the local setting of a gospel which 
never found any considerable encouragement in 
that vicinity, and where the teachings of Jesus 
have been given less chance to function than 
any place else on earth—one wonders if the 
Christian world might not have been distinctly 
advantaged if we had never known certainly 
when or where Jesus lived or anything about his 
racial connections; informed only of his attitude 
toward life and his teachings concerning it. 
Perhaps a few electrical engineers, whose life- 
task is the application of this mysterious energy 
to the demands of modern civilization, remem- 
ber that Alessandro Volta, for whom the “‘volt”’ 
was named, was born near Lake Como, in 1747, 
and died in the same vicinity, in 1828; that he 
was, at different periods of his career, professor 


“YE ARE MY FRIENDS IF—” 45 


of physics in three European universities; that 
he was a friend of Napoleon and deeply admired 
by the emperor of Austria. But it was not at all 
necessary that the late Charles Steinmetz should 
have been able to remember these facts about 
Volta, or ever to have known them, in order to 
achieve the place of distinction he occupied as 
a demonstrator of electrical energy. 

On the other hand, it is conceivable that an 
omnivorous reader, with a penchant for biogra- 
phy, might know the story of Volta, from the 
cradle to the grave, and be able to give fascinat- 
ing lectures on the dramatic incidents involved 
in the construction of the “‘voltaic pile,’ and 
still be obliged to stand helpless in the presence 
of a disabled vacuum-sweeper in his own house, 
not only unable to make a new one but lacking 
the capacity to discover the ailing part in an 
instrument complete but for some minor func- 
tional disorder. 

One can even imagine a heated argument, 
possibly resulting in unfriendly words and a cool 
parting, between two rocking-chair scientists 
over the exact date on which Doctor Volta re- 
ceived the Copley medal from the Royal So- 
ciety. One contender, boasting that he had been 
an ardent student of Volta’s career, from his 
youth up, might assert that this distinction was 
conferred upon the celebrated physicist in 1791. 
The other, equally sure of his knowledge, might 
declare that the Copley medal had been awarded 


46 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


to Doctor Volta in 1792. And yet, if, in the 
heat of this controversy, the electric fan, which 
had been attempting to stabilize the tempera- 
ture of the room while the debate increased in 
velocity, were suddenly to become disabled, it 
is possible that neither of the disputants would 
know what to do about it. They might be 
obliged to call—over a telephone whose internal 
principles were unknown to them—for an elec- 
triclan to come to their assistance; and, when 
he came and had been asked to decide the ques- 
tion of the Copley medal date, after he had put 
the fan back into commission, it is again possi- 
ble that even he might not be supplied with 
authoritative information on the point. 

If we are to present the teachings of Jesus in 
such a manner as to give them their rightful 
chance to perform their work in the world, some 
arrangement must soon be made to shift the em- 
phasis, in our religious instruction, from the 
map of Palestine to the Sermon on the Mount. 
It should also be added, apropos of this matter, 
that it has been unfortunate, in our attempted 
teaching of the life of Jesus, that we have felt 
obliged to present the recorded events of his 
career chronologically. The engaging nativity 
stories, so rich in dramatic incident and, conse- 
quently, so easy to offer to the insatiable imagi- 
nation of childhood, have been magnified out of 
all proportion to their exact importance in 
relation to the acts and words of Jesus. Arriv- 


“YE ARE MY FRIENDS IF—” = 47 


ing, at length, upon the scene of his ministry, 
we have consistently featured the’ spectacular 
events recorded of him to the almost complete 
obscuration of the vital principles he enunci- 
ated. 

A common method of viewing Jesus’ powerful 
personality in an act of service is to contemplate 
the supernatural deeds attributed to him, usu- 
ally beginning with the first of these recorded 
wonders—the transformation of water into wine 
at the Galilean wedding. Much 1s made of this, 
chiefly for the reason that the record places the 
event first, chronologically, among the mysteri- 
ous acts of the Master. In view of the fact that 
this is, of all the miracles predicated of him, the 
most difficult to comprehend, it seems unfortu- 
nate that it should be customarily the first of 
these baffling problems presented to the little 
child. For, however difficult it may be to accept 
the transformation of water into wine, by a 
word of command, the problem is as nothing 
compared to the greater query as to the Mas- 
ter’s reason for employing divine power in such 
a cause and on such an occasion. 

It is regretfully to be believed that Jesus is 
more often than otherwise brought to the atten- 
tion of early adolescence as a magician. It is, 
also, quite natural that this blunder should be 
committed; for childhood delights in tales of 
that which lies quite outside the field of com- 
mon experience, belonging rather to the fancy- 


48 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


world in which their active young imaginations 
rejoice. 

Nor is this criticism to be understood as a 
casual dismissal of the miracles from our thought 
of the Galilean. Delete the miraculous element 
from the life of Christ, as recorded in the Gos- 
pels, and you have repudiated enough of the 
story to invalidate the whole of it. 

But it is clear that a better balance should be 
maintained in presenting all the truth about 
Jesus. He was a worker of wonders, but he was 
not a mere magician. He was considerably 
more than a skilful prestidigitator; infinitely 
more than a physician or a psychiatrist. How 
often he, himself, expresses anxiety lest he be 
followed and approved for the sake of the physi- 
cal blessings he had conferred, or sought “‘be- 
cause ye did eat of the loaves and were filled.” 
That they might learn his “‘way of life” was of 
much higher concern to him than that they 
might be startled into a bewildered acceptance 
of him as a Hebrew magician who wrought in- 
stantaneous cures. The miracle of the divine 
friendship was and is a more important fact 
than the event at Cana of Galilee, and whenever 
the picture of his life has become so lamentably 
out of drawing that he looms larger as a wonder- 
worker than a friend, guide, and teacher, we 
have missed one of his most insistent advices. 


“YE ARB MY FRIENDS: IE” AQ 


Ill 


It may be entirely superfluous to discuss the 
fact, in the next place, that friendship with Jesus 
is not to be achieved through the mere intellec- 
tual acceptance of any ancient creed or con- 
temporaneous confession wherein distinctive 
groups of Christians have endeavored to set 
forth the beliefs which identify them from all 
other groups of Christians. 

So much has been said on this subject in the 
recent past that it would seem as if everybody 
were in full agreement on the matter. Doubt- 
less, only a very small minority of Christians 
would reply in the affirmative if asked whether, 
in their opinion, one’s signature attached to any 
formula of faith—traditional or modern—auto- 
matically confers a blessing upon the confessor. 

It will be well to remember, however, that 
the creeds and confessions of organized Chris- 
tianity, while registering obvious imperfections 
—mostly by the omission of so much that was 
vitally important—have served to bind the 
Christians of all ages together in a common 
cause, and are therefore of inestimable value to 
a proper understanding of the history and aims 
of Christianity. 

The modern electrical engineer may smile as 
he studies the drawings of instruments made by 
Faraday, but he may not scoff! Faraday’s crude 


50 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


machines for the generation of current formed 
an absolutely indispensable link in the chain of 
adventure, invention, and discovery which even- 
tually brought a great mystery out into the 
light of common day to serve mankind. 

The sequence of the creeds helps to explain 
the nature of Christ’s conquering kingdom, 
which is not to be considered as a static force, 
but a kinetic energy. That his kingdom should 
grow is not inconsistent with his teachings. A 
movement that was in his earthly day as a 
grain of mustard-seed, would develop into a 
tree with spreading branches. ‘‘Greater works 
than these shall ye do,” he said, and apparently 
with satisfaction that his followers, in the days 
to come, might increasingly liberate the latent 
power comprehended in his message. 

Creeds, therefore, while they may not be con- 
sidered so much as “houses to live in as bridges 
to pass over’ (if one may borrow a phrase 
from Hegel’s definition of “‘truth’’), furnish the 
structure upon which the whole edifice of or- 
ganized Christianity rests. 

The objection is entirely valid which declares 
that the ancient creed-makers, in their zeal to 
account for the supernatural as revealed in 
Jesus, placed more emphasis upon their explana- 
tion of how he came by it than upon the use he 
made of it in his redemptive mission. They at- 
tempt to explain the biological process by which 
he became endowed with supernal wisdom, but 


“YE ARE MY FRIENDS IF—” 51 


neglect to mention what he taught. In no one 
of these ancient formulas does the “‘Golden 
Rule” appear, even by implication. 

Clearly, the largest objection that can be 
raised against the ancient creeds of the Church 
is the fact that there is nothing the believer can 
do about them beyond saying that he thinks 
them true. They make no demand upon him 
further than assent. His statement that he be- 
lieves God to be the “Maker of heaven and 
earth” is an intellectual affirmation which he 
shares with many millions of people to whom 
the Christian conception of God had not been 
taught. He can confess his belief in the divine 
character of Jesus without committing himself 
to the Jesus programme of life. He can even ex- 
press his belief in everlasting life as a possible 
attainment without moving a step in that direc- 
tion. It is to be feared that many have labored 
under the delusion that belief in these doctrines 
is the process by which spiritual life grows, if, 
indeed, it is not an actual insurance of spiritual 
safety. It should be remembered that to believe 
in the Fatherhood of God, to believe in the sa- 
viourhood of Jesus, to believe in the abiding 
presence of the Holy Spirit, to believe in the 
forgiveness of sins and the life everlasting 1s 
merely to add to one’s spiritual liabilities unless 
one obeys the commandments unequivocally 
laid down as the conditions under which these 
blessings are conferred. 


52 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


The saddest fact about our polemic strifes is 
not the unbeautiful spectacle presented to the 
world at large—of Christians scowling at one 
another while endeavoring to comprehend and 
teach a gospel of love—although that is sad 
enough; it is the fact that in our ardent advo- 
cacy of controversial matters, we permit the 
main issue to escape us. 

It reminds one of the various objections raised 
when electrical communication was in its early 
stages of development. It was announced that 
a man proposed to send a message over wires 
fastened to wooden poles. How could a man 
send a message over a wire? Would the writing 
go through the wire? How absurd! When teleg- 
raphy became an accomplished fact, the public 
accepted it and made use of it. Most people did 
not pretend to understand it; they only knew 
that it was practicable. Messages did actually 
go across hundreds of miles, by way of wires 
athxed to wooden poles. Presently it was pro- 
posed that a telegraph wire be made long enough 
to cross the ocean. Loud laughter was heard in 
many quarters. Here was a man who thought 
he could plant telegraph poles in the sea! The 
wire concept and the pole concept were indis- 
pensable to each other. It was only after the 
submarine cable had been demonstrated that 
many persons reluctantly conceded that tele- 
graph poles were not essential to telegraphy. 
It could be done, apparently, with wires alone. 


“YE ARE MY FRIENDS IF—” 53 


After a while the suggestion came that telegra- 
phy could be accomplished without wires. The 
lay mind was all confused with non-essentials. 
To have instantaneous communication, you 
must have poles and wires spanning the distance 
travelled by the message. Much of our muddy 
thinking results from an ardent insistence upon 
things that do not matter. 

Jesus says we become his friends by obeying 
his commandments. ‘There is nothing very com- 
plicated about that, for the excellent reason that 
there was nothing complicated about his com- 
mandments. There is always room for long and 
serious debate as to the proper form for the ad- 
ministration of the sacrament of baptism, and 
people will always be debating the matter, with- 
out solving the problem to the satisfaction of 
anybody but themselves. No debate, however, 
can be staged over Jesus’ commandment con- 
cerning our proper attitude toward the home- 
less, the hungry, and the sick. A man is not 
required to know anything at all about meta- 
physics to understand and obey the doctrine of 
the second mile, good measure in business, good 
manners in society, forbearance, generosity, and 
simple trust in the providence of a fair-dealing 
God. 

On the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus met with 
his friends for a farewell supper. It was on the 
occasion of ““The Passover” —an ancient feast 
of the Jews commemorative of that night in 


54 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


Egypt when, by sprinkling blood upon their 
doors, the early Israelites were spared in the 
midst of a great national disaster. 

As Jesus passed the cup on that evening, when 
every loyal Jew was remembering the signifi- 
cance of the day, he found in its crimson depths 
a peculiar significance. This, too, was blood, 
symbolic of his own, soon to be shed upon the 
cross. At that moment it occurred to him to 
idealize the traditional rite. What had been 
sacrificial would henceforth be sacramental. He 
passed the cup to his friends with the request 
that they drink with him of this blood, express- 
ing the hope that in the days to come, whenever 
they sat together about the table and the cup 
was passed, they would remember the purpose 
of his death. There was nothing very compli- 
cated about it. It became seriously complicated, 
however, at a later date, when theologians, grop- 
ing through the mists of such baffling terms 
as “‘transubstantiation,”’ “‘consubstantiation,” 
“subpanation,”’ and “‘impanation,” apparently 
forgot what the whole event was about, in their 
zeal to explain how and in what degree wine 
became blood. 

Of course, we have happily outgrown and out- 
lived a great deal of such unprofitable contro- 
versies, but enough of them still remain to jeop- 
ardize the correct thinking of men who should 
be brought, by the shortest possible route, to a 
relation of friendship with Jesus. They cannot 


“YE ARE MY FRIENDS IF—” 55 


be expected to obey his commandments until 
they love him. They cannot love him until they 
know him. This, then, is the main issue, and 
while we may with becoming reverence endeavor 
to observe the outward forms and ceremonial 
rites of Christianity, sacred through ages of de- 
voted commemoration, they become mere mock- 
eries if given priority over obedience to Christ’s 
commandments. Doubtless the controversy will 
never be settled which deals with the technic of 
sacramental administration; but nobody will 
ever be required to guess about such questions 
as: Is it better to love or to hate one’s neigh- 
bor? Isit better to forgive, or to carry a grudge? 
Is it permissible to lay a love-offering upon the 
altar while at enmity with a fellow man whom 
one has wronged? ‘These are the serious tests of 
Christianity, and there is no element of uncer- 
tainty about them. 


IV 


Turning now to the more constructive treat- 
ment of this theme, it may be observed that any 
man who desires friendship with Jesus should 
consider it a pleasant thought that the Master 
was so deeply concerned with the problem of 
men’s lifework. He knew where the fishing was 
best. He knew about the industrial problems of 
the vineyard. The little domestic cares of the 
homemaker were very real issues, in his regard. 
He had thought deeply about the problems of 


56 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


kings going to war, and ambitious men seeking 
to build tall towers with few brick. He could 
talk helpfully to shepherds; but that was not 
because he had the mind of a shepherd. He was 
not ill at ease in the presence of Nicodemus ben 
Gorion, probably the wisest old gentleman in 
Jerusalem. He who only yesterday was sitting 
on the edge of a fishing-boat, talking in terms of 
affectionate intimacy with a group of Galileans, 
this evening smiles at the mental chaos of the 
Holy City’s wisest seer, and remarks: ‘Art 
thou a master in Israel, and knowest noz these 
things?” He was able to call the obscure Na- 
thaniel by his name when he saw him sitting 
under the fig-tree. Jesus entered whole-heart- 
edly into the problems of humanity. 

It was not true of him that because he was 
of the Jewish race, nobody but a Jew could ex- 
pect to become his friend. It was not true of 
him that because he had worked in a carpenter- 
shop for fifteen years, nobody but a carpenter 
could find him congenial and interesting. It is 
a significant fact that, while he had spent half 
his life handling chisels, saws, and other wood- 
working instruments, he never uttered a re- 
corded sentence in which any property of the 
carpenter appeared. He talked about every 
other craft but his own, which offers an inter- 
esting sidelight on the nature of his absolute 
abandonment of self to make quest of other 
men’s problems. 


“YE ARE MY FRIENDS IF—” 57 


The Christian has a right to feel that Jesus 
is interested in his vocation, wants him to suc- 
ceed in it if it is honorable and worth his efforts; 
has a right to invoke the guidance of Jesus in 
his business. If a man cannot realize the friend- 
ship of the Master in his lifework, it is doubtful 
if he can arrive at this relationship at all, seeing 
that some of the most serious problems of ethics 
arise in the course of one’s daily business. The 
professional man who, on the threshold of his 
office in the morning, pauses with his hand on 
the door-knob to utter the resolve that he will 
attempt to serve that day as a witness to the 
truth of Jesus’ moral standards, can expect to 
come into a peculiarly close and vital relation- 
ship with a mysterious presence which, at cer- 
tain strategic times, will seem almost eel enough 
to touch with the physical hand! Persons who 
assert that this is impracticable only mean that 
they themselves have never experienced it, prob- 
ably because they have never made the ad- 
venture. 

Friendship with Jesus may be cultivated in 
our recreations. The Galilean was essentially 
an out-of-doors person. He knew and _ loved 
nature. Exactly what he would have to say to 
our present-day civilization that has walled it- 
self into vast cities where its nerves are frayed 
by the grind of steel flange on steel rail, rivet- 
hammers, and the warning-signals of its too 
rapid transportation, one can only surmise. 


58 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


Galilee was, by comparison, a very unexciting 
country. And yet we find Jesus inviting his 
friends, now and again, to “‘come apart, and rest 
awhile,” whereupon he would take them to the 
top of a mountain, or over along the seashore in 
the neighborhood of Tyre. True, he had much 
to accomplish in a brief lifetime; but apparently 
he felt that an occasional day off, communing 
with nature, in the hills and by the sea, was jus- 
tifiable. 

The Christian can sense the friendship of 
Jesus in his out-of-door sports and strolls. He 
can realize, as he watches the tide roll in, that 
the mood it produces in him probably was the 
same manner of meditation in the mind of Jesus 
as he contemplated the tireless work of the 
waves. It will be no irreverence if he makes a 
quiet request that he be given, at that hour, 
something of the spiritual stimulation that must 
have come to his Galilean friend under such 
circumstances. As he surveys the landscape 
from a hilltop, it is easy for him to feel the 
strange comradeship of one who so often escaped 
from the depressing contacts of a self-seeking 
civilization to put himself into an intimate rela- 
tionship with his Father. 

Of course, as everybody knows from experi- 
ence, the easiest and quickest and most natural 
way to sense the friendship of Jesus is by way 
of the performance of a generous deed. A man 
can live for a whole day in the glow of an appro- 


“YE ARE MY FRIENDS IF—” 59 


bation as definitely tendered him as if an actual 
voice had said: “Good work! You are my 
friend!”” But we, who hope to experience this 
friendship to the full, should seek other contacts 
with this great spirit than through our charities. 
We must try to find him in our work, in our 
play; when we observe a glorious sunset or a 
splendid dawn. 

Many a person who has never sought this 
friendship is able to confess that he has had curi- 
ous sensations of a mysterious presence in an 
hour of bitter loss or bereavement. There can 
be no doubt that the spirit of Jesus makes ad- 
vances even to people who have done him much 
wrong, either by way of actual rejection or cyni- 
cal indifference, when they have arrived at a 
moment of dire need. One of the most interest- 
ing testimonies in point is that of George Eliot, 
who states that while engaged in a translation 
of Strauss’s “Life of Jesus,” which endeavored 
to reduce him to the estate of a mere teacher, 
utterly lacking in any special endowments of a 
divine character, she once became so fatigued 
with her labors that she begged the spirit of the 
Christ, whom she was engaged in disavowing, 
to give her a sense of peace and rest. She fur- 
ther attests that she was granted that boon. 

Whatever one may care to think of all this— 
the indefensible position of the suppliant; her 
ingratitude, as displayed by the resumption of 
her work—it may well be believed that the mag- 


60 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


nanimous Christ is willing to offer his friend- 
ship, sometimes, to persons who had made very 
little effort to merit that honor. The Gospel 
records state that Jesus healed the wounded ear 
of the rufhan who had come out with the party 
to arrest him in Gethsemane. Apparently this 
Galilean was able to detach himself from the 
case and judge it on its own merits, irrespective 
of how it might affect him personally. The fact 
that a man had been hurt while on this errand, 
which meant pain and death to Jesus, was con- 
sidered as a separate item, quite apart from the 
circumstances under which it had occurred. 
Jesus did not stop to argue that the man had 
it coming to him. All he could see was the 
wound. It mattered little to him how the man 
had come by it. 

It should be easy for any magnanimous soul 
to persuade himself that he would like to be- 
come acquainted with a man of such intent. 
One of the charmed words these days is ‘“‘sports- 
manship.”” Men seem to admire persons who are 
able to exhibit “good sportsmanship.” If one 
may with reverence venture to say it of Jesus 
at all, then one must go the whole way with it, 
and declare that if that designation means mag- 
. nanimity of mind, the ability to suffer loss with 
a smile, the capacity to stand up, bravely, under 
unjust punishment, and pardon enemies with 
the final breath, then Jesus deserves it said of 
him. But if it shall be said of him, it must never 


“YE ARE: MY FRIENDS IF—” 61 


again be predicated of any other man; for there 
has been no other valor, no other sympathy, no 
other compassion in the world like his. 

Only a thoroughly courageous and high-mind- 
ed person can realize the credit he takes to him- 
self when he believes that Jesus is his friend, 
for only the courageous and high-minded can 
ever hope to understand, even in part, the na- 
ture of Jesus’ heroism. 

That friendship, however, is offered to all 
mankind—to the valorous and the timorous, to 
the wise and the untaught, to the brilliant and 
the dull. And the terms of it are always the 
same: ‘‘Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever 
I command you.” 


CHAPTER III 


“MANY ARE CALLED, BUT FEW ARE 
CHOSEN” 


’ ] HOEVER attempts to analyze the say- 
ings of Jesus must begin with the un- 
derstanding that many of these pre- 
cepts were and are applicable to specific groups 
of people. Most of this teaching was done in 
parables, involving the simplest of materials. It 
should be realized, however, that there were 
many parables addressed to the little company 
of disciples, in special training for leadership, 
which could not have been comprehended by 
the miscellaneous multitude. On at least one 
occasion Jesus, having delivered a parable to - 
the crowd, repeated it later to his disciples, dis- 
cussing the more subtle implications of the 
theme. He explained his reason for doing this 
on the ground that the smaller circle was better 
equipped to consider the broader reaches of the 
parable than the general throng. Said he to his 
disciples: “It is given unto you to know the 
mysteries of the kingdom as it is not given unto 
them.” 

The student will find it fascinating to observe 
the marked difference between the parables 
spoken to the multitude and to the disciples. A 

62 


“MANY ARE) CALLED” 63 


few of the cases in point will be discussed pres- 
ently, after we have considered certain other 
groupings of Jesus’ sayings which seem to re- 
quire our earlier attention. 

At this moment we are to focus our interest 
upon the teachings of Jesus which make a spe- 
cial appeal to the adolescent mind. The Gali- 
lean teacher did not say, in presenting this type 
of parable, that it was of prime concern to 
youth; but it will be observed that these stories 
deal with matters which the settled, inflexible 
mind of maturity is obliged to admit are the 
problems of adolescence. 

An excellent example of this type of practical 
teaching, addressed primarily to persons who 
have the future to reckon with rather than the 
past, may be found in the parable of the ten 
young women who one evening went out to the 
edge of the little town in which they lived, to 
meet and welcome a wedding party. It was a 
common custom for the young friends of the 
bride to go out with lighted lamps to escort the 
newly wedded pair to the bridegroom’s home, 
after the conventional visit had been made to 
the ancestral house of the bride. 

In the parable the wedding procession is de- 
layed. ‘The young women who composed the re- 
ception escort grew weary of waiting, and fell 
asleep. At midnight the belated bridal party 
arrived. Of the ten lamps which had been 
alight earlier in the evening, only five were still 


64. THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


equipped to offer welcome. And these lighted 
lamps were in the hands of the foresighted, who 
had provided themselves with extra oil to insure 
against just such an emergency as had arisen. 

It may be assumed that each of the five fool- 
ish virgins realized, before she started from 
home, that while she was prepared to fulfil her 
obligation, provided there was no delay in the 
arrival of the party, she would be seriously em- 
barrassed in the event of any tardiness on the 
part of the bridegroom. It may also be imagined 
that each of these foolish five, in considering the 
possibility of such an emergency, reflected that 
even if there were a delay, all the others would 
have had enough forethought to bring additional 
oil with them. She could borrow from them; or, 
if it came to the worst, the failure of one lamp 
would hardly be noticed. ‘There would be nine 
effectively doing business. She would keep 
along with the others, and attend the feast, 
anyway. 

Doubtless the world would be able to extend 
more generosity than it does to the unprepared, 
if only one person out of ten faced life carrying 
a dead lamp. The fact that fully fifty per cent 
are unequipped to meet their problems, for lack 
of adequate preparation, makes society more 
exacting in its attitude toward the failures. 
Doubtless, if any one of the unfortunate virgins 
in the parable had suspected that instead of 
being the only delinquent, and probably to be 


“MANY ARE CALLED” 65 


promptly pardoned—with a little good-natured 
chafing, maybe—she was to become a member 
of a definite class, composed of half the people 
of her generation, who would bring chagrin upon 
themselves and perplexity to everybody, she 
would have gone prepared. 

What other excuses these foolish virgins may 
have given to themselves, before starting with 
an insufficient supply of oil, can only be imag- 
ined. Jesus does not attempt to analyze their 
minds. He draws the picture in elemental 
strokes, and leaves all matters of incident and 
detail to be supplied by the auditor and reader. 
In passing, it should be said that all of the Gali- 
lean’s parables are constructed in this manner. 
They are only the outlines of stories, which leave 
opportunity for the recipient to adapt them 
to his own need and fill in the missing pieces 
of the picture from his own imagination and 
experience. 

A little thinking on the problems of the foolish 
virgins evolves certain possible situations some- 
what as follows: We may suppose that one of 
these young women considered her lamp as a 
mere emblem of welcome. If it was lighted, so 
much the better. If it was out, it would still 
stand for welcome. In her opinion, the lamp 
was the thing—not the light. Lamps had a 
very interesting tradition. They were emblem- 
atic of learning; they graced the altars of reli- 
gion; they were found in kings’ houses; they 


66 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


were carried in processions. It was better if they 
were lighted; but they were lamps still, even if 
they were dead and cold. In other words, this 
particular young woman felt that to go through 
the motions of doing something important and 
meritorious was as good, in the long run, as 
actually doing it. Even a dead lamp, in her 
hand, would certify that her intent was right. 
But for. this unforeseen emergency she, too, 
would be carrying a lighted lamp. She was not 
responsible for the emergency. If anybody was 
to blame for her plight, it was the tardy bride- 
groom. 

All of these excuses may have seemed valid to 
the young woman who conceived them. Doubt- 
less she felt seriously aggrieved because they did 
not seem as good to others as to her. The fact 
remains that she was not admitted to the feast. 
In a last-minute effort to repair her blunder, she 
hurried, with her hapless companions, to the 
market-place, hoping with no faith that some 
shopkeeper might be about at midnight. When 
she returned to the home of the host, the door 
was shut. She called. They all called. But the 
merrymakers did not hear them. 

Undoubtedly it could be shown that most 
people who face life unprepared can explain 
their failure on the ground that they had 
thought one needs only to be of good intent. 
They had thought that going through the mo- 
tions would be all that their generation would 


“MANY ARE CALLED” 67 


require. They had thought that the lamp was 
more important than the flame. 

It is conceivable that some other member of 
this unsuccessful group, in the parable, per- 
mitted her zstheticism to get in the way of her 
eficiency. She was willing to carry a lamp, be- 
cause the lamp was beautiful. She declined to 
carry the oil-jug, however, which would provide 
for emergencies. Whatever may be said in be- 
half of the beautiful and artistic things of life, 
there is something also to be said for the pro- 
saic. A deal of dull drudgery usually accom- 
panies one on any serious quest of a worth-while 
ambition. Our world is quite overstocked with 
people who might be useful if they had not mag- 
nified the zsthetic interests of life out of all pro- 
portion to the practical considerations involved 
in honest work. 

Another foolish virgin may have determined 
that her interest in this event was worth a cer- 
tain amount—so much for her gown, so much 
for her veil, so much for her slippers, and so 
much for oil. She was a thrifty person, operating 
her affairs on the budget system. She would 
devote a given sum to this enterprise—and not 
one farthing more. Later she discovered that it 
was a mere farthing’s worth of oil that would 
have given her a victory instead of a defeat. All 
about us are people who are willing to invest a 
certain amount of energy, time, and interest in 
a task; but no more. Perhaps one additional 


68 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


stroke of the pick would have touched ore; 
another day of working faithfully at the minor 
position would have brought a promotion; an- 
other mile of plodding along would have brought 
the city in sight. They have not possessed the 
vision to keep on investing themselves, in the 
hope of reward. Fatigue overcame them, and 
they dropped the pick, losing all their labor with 
success almost in their grasp. They resigned 
from the dull task, after a long grind of drudg- 
ery, just on the eve of advancement. They felt 
the journey was a fool’s errand, after a long and 
tiresome pilgrimage, and turned back when they 
were all but within sight of their destination. 

Perhaps another of these foolish virgins, when 
cautioned by her family that she would better 
take extra oil along, replied that she felt sure 
there would be no delay that night. She knew 
these people. They were punctual. No; nothing 
like that would happen this time. Many per- 
sons have a notion that while other people may 
be confronted with emergencies, they, them- 
selves, are looked after by a special providence. 
They can take any leap and the angels will have 
charge concerning them. They hope to be 
lucky. When they are refused admittance to the 
feast, they explain it on the ground that luck 
was against them. 

It may be supposed that the fifth young 
woman of this foolish group had no reason to 
offer at all for her failure to take extra oil along. 


“MANY ARE CALLED” 69 


She was not an esthete. It would not have both- 
ered her pride to carry a jug. She was not a 
sacramentarian, to whom an extinguished lamp 
was as good as a lighted lamp, seeing that all the 
value the lamp had, anyway, was emblematic 
and symbolic. She was not thrifty. The price 
of surplus oil which she might not be called upon 
to use did not figure in her calculations. She 
was not an opportunist, gambling with Fate to 
shield her from emergencies. Indeed, she was 
so lacking in optimism that she had a presenti- 
ment there would be a delay that night. But 
all the others would be prepared. She would 
slip in unobtrusively, and her delinquency would 
be soon forgotten. Her lamp would be out; but, 
even so, she would contrive to enter the ban- 
quet-room. The host would be considerate. He 
would say: “Oh, well, let her in!” There can 
be no question but many people face life in ex- 
actly this mood. They hope to be carried along 
on the current. They expect to enter without a 
pass. There will be but one unlighted lamp. It 
will be theirs. But the incident will be over- 
looked. The host will merely smile. And surely 
one could always borrow. 

When it came to the moment of crisis, how- 
ever, the foolish virgins, although well fortified 
with excuses and explanations, began to realize 
that there was only one fact at issue. They were 
out of oil. Oil was the thing that night; not 
lamps, however beautiful or emblematic; not 


70 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


thrift or luck or impudence—but_oil! They 
asked the wise for a loan. The wise prudently 
figured that if they divided their oil in half, in- 
stead of escorting the party into town with only 
five lighted lamps—which was bad enough— 
they took chances of arriving at the bride- 
groom’s house with all the lamps extinguished. 

So the foolish went to buy at midnight. It 
was a foolish thing to do, but they were foolish 
and they hurried to the market. The wise went 
in to the feast, and the door was shut. It was 
not shut with a bang. The guests did not relish 
the idea of their friends being left outside; but 
there was nothing they could do about it. The 
door was shut; regretfully we hope; but—shut ! 


IT 


Another of the parables addressed to the ado- 
lescent who has life before him pictures oppor- 
tunity as a feast offered by a king. Here we 
have, also, a wedding, a dinner, and a problem 
relating to the guests. The prince was to be 
married. There was to be an imposing affair to 
which only the blue-blooded and full-pedigreed 
of the neighboring principalities were invited. 
At the last minute, when the feast was practi- 
cally on the table, the royal host began to re- 
ceive couriers bearing the regrets of his invited 
guests. He was enraged. He sent his servants 
out to the four corners to ask in anybody and 


“MANY ARE CALLED” 71 


everybody. They obeyed. Presently the king 
saw them coming—a miscellaneous aggregation 
of rags and tatters—and he was in great per- 
plexity. Even to avenge himself on his aristo- 
cratic friends, who had treated him so badly, he 
could not admit these people to his banquet- 
hall in such poor array. He bade his servants 
gather up all the cast-off court finery and pro- 
vide his tatterdemalion guests with garb fitting 
the occasion. All was going nicely. The prole- 
tariat accepted the garments, and passed into 
the dining-room. But presently a guest ap- 
peared who, when graciously tendered a robe, 
declined to wear it. He had been asked in, just 
as he was; and they could take him as he was 
or throw him out. So they threw him out. 

Of course, the problem at issue in the parable 
concerned the democratic tendency of Jesus’ 
“kingdom.” We must not linger long over the 
history of that problem, for our business with 
the little story is to investigate its application 
to our present life. Very briefly: the Israelites 
considered themselves a religious aristocracy. 
Within that aristocracy there were many mu- 
tually contemptuous castes and sects. Through- 
out the long ages of the Hebrew nation it 
had been believed and taught that Jehovah 
was chiefly concerned with the self-admittedly 
‘chosen people.” Now a new revelation of The 
Absolute was being disclosed through the min- 
istry of Jesus. The religious aristocracy had 


afi THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


spurned this feast. Consequently, the doors had 
been thrown open to everybody. But these new 
guests were to understand that they must not 
enter upon this surprising privilege minus a 
sense of the honor conferred upon them. Merely 
because the aristocracy had declined to attend 
the great supper of the king, it would not be 
permitted the rank and file to treat the event 
with indifference. They would be furnished with 
attire suitable to a king’s house, and they must 
wear that attire with as much credit to them- 
selves and the king as lay within their humble 
capacities. That was the meaning of the para- 
ble for the people who first heard it spoken. 
For us it presents the same lesson, although 
the circumstances in which we find ourselves 
are somewhat different. Under the direct influ- 
ence of Christian civilization the doors to the 
Palace of Opportunity have been thrown open 
to the multitude. It is only a little while since 
the privileges of education, positions of trust 
and honor, public recognition, and social ad- 
vancement were restricted to a minority who 
realized them mostly through inheritance. The 
liberating power of Christianity, manifested in 
the rise of democracy and a more equable dis- 
tribution of human rights, brought a new type 
of guest into the banquet-hall of privilege. But 
the tattered guest, until lately unrecognized, 
must not enter upon this feast disdainfully. 
While it is true that he has not been asked to 


“MANY ARE CALLED” 73 


assume responsibilities commensurate to the 
high distinction offered him, he may not with 
impunity decline to do at least the small honor 
to this occasion implied by the acceptance of a 
“wedding garment.” 

Perhaps it would be imposing somewhat upon 
this parable to read into it an admonition to the 
ragged and heedless crew, gathered from the 
ends of the earth, that jostles and pushes to-day 
in the vestibule of our own country, where the 
liberating power of Christian altruism has been 
brought to the finest demonstration ever made 
of that principle in this world. Perhaps it would 
be asking this parable to lend itself to a situa- 
tion too far afield from its original purpose, to 
suggest that these lately invited guests, at the 
feast of democratic liberty, should at least as- 
sume the outward symbols of appreciation. But 
no man who has watched, with growing anxiety, 
the greedy assumption of these privileges on 
the part of so many persons hitherto unaccus- 
tomed to any estate beyond penury, rags, ver- 
min, and vice, but utterly indifferent to the 
slightest obligation that such acceptance of 
privilege naturally entails, can read this parable 
without wishing it might be printed, in red ink 
and large letters, in the seventy-six tongues and 
dialects now heard about the festal board of our 
world-famed liberties, for the edification of those 
who decline to wear the garments courteously 
furnished by their host. 


74 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


In the parable it was not left to the ragged, 
erimy guest to say whether or not he would do 
this little to honor the event. The man who was 
all for his privileges and not at all for his respon- 
sibilities was promptly excused from further 
participation. No long-drawn-out trial was con- 
ducted in his case. His own attitude condemned 
him. He was asked why he had refused to com- 
ply with so small a request, and he had no reply 
to offer. So they threw him out. 

Obviously, when a royal feast is thrown open 
to the fourth estate, certain safeguards must 
be established to prevent the abuse of this lib- 
erty; and, unless such safeguards are erected, 
the feast cannot very long be continued with 
honor or success. Doubtless one takes the risk, 
here, of seeming to regard with disfavor the 
arrival of new guests at the feast. We, who may 
consider ourselves as servants in this Palace 
of Opportunity, are to receive graciously and 
eladly the polyglot and somewhat bewildered 
multitude that approaches the open door from 
every point of the compass. It is the Master’s 
will that every man should have his rightful 
chance at life. We, who have anything what- 
soever to do with this feast spread with the new 
liberties wherein a Christian civilization has 
made us free, are to welcome the arriving guests 
and offer them the garments which symbolize a 
willingness to accept these benefits with a be- 
coming gratitude. But it is also part of our task 


“MANY ARE CALLED” ain 


to see to it that the guests put these garments 
on! Only thus may we insure the perpetuity of 
that feast ! 

Viewing this parable from a slightly different 
angle, we find in it a mine of practical counsel 
to present-day youth. Our high schools, col- 
leges, and universities to-day are gorged to suf- 
focation with hundreds of thousands of young 
men and women who labor under the impres- 
sion that attendance at an institution of higher 
learning is a guarantee of prosperity, success, 
and honor. Only a small percent comparatively 
ever realize their ambition. The large majority 
of them are pitched out of the Palace of Oppor- 
tunity without trial or ceremony. Mostly they 
come to this humiliating disaster by way of their 
refusal to wear a “wedding garment.” They are 
eager enough, apparently, to attend the feast; 
but reluctant to do it honor. 

No perplexity in modern life is more menacing 
than this spectacle of thousands who are ex- 
pected to be the leaders of our civilization within 
the next two decades, nonchalantly sitting at 
the festal board of educational privilege with the 
curled lip of contempt, frankly and shamelessly 
working for marks and credits, scornful of the few 
who exhibit any eagerness to do their work with 
joy, and denouncing them as “greasy grinds.” 

The memorization of this parable might very 
well be made an entrance requirement for fresh- 
men in American colleges; and if, somewhere in 


76 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


the formal declarations of the senior’s diploma 
there could occur the significant words “‘ Many 
are called, but few are chosen,” the phrase 
might have a sobering effect upon the innumera- 
ble host that marches forth every June, suffer- 
ing of the obsession that a college degree is a 
patent of greatness. 

In the face of society’s present bewilderment 
and grave need of adequate leadership, any 
youth who crowds himself into the congested 
district of large privilege dares not accept these 
benefits with an air of indifference. In this wel- 
ter of conflicting motives, when the very air is 
vibrant with the raucous demands of the irre- 
sponsible who are eventually to die in debt (un- 
aware of it and unashamed of it) to a civiliza- 
tion whose problems they had multiplied, it 
surely behooves the young men and women who 
think of themselves as potential leaders to ap- 
proach their trust with consecration. 

By circumstances which have borne them 
along, almost without their having moved hand 
or foot to advance themselves, many young 
people of our day have come to this focal point 
of privilege where their election into the mi- 
nority-who-succeed seems impending. Many of 
them have given no thought at all to the gravity 
of their position. One sees them come and go, 
in our institutions of higher learning, gay, care- 
free, apparently anxious to be out of college and 
into the racket for the sole purpose of getting 


“MANY -ARE CALLED” vite 


what they can, as rapidly as possible, at a mini- 
mum cost of effort. Not infrequently they enter 
upon the active affairs of their lives absolutely 
unstirred, sluggish, freighted with knowledge 
which, in another’s hands, might have enriched 
his world, but in their keep a total loss! Let 
them make no mistake about the nature of the 
honor conferred upon them; for the candidates 
for success and failure, in every graduating class, 
are related numerically, almost as people are 
thus related on a crowded street ! 

Occasionally in some high moment one be- 
holds a stirring drama wherein some dynamic 
soul, half-blinded by a sudden flare of light on 
his Damascus road, acknowledges his mistaken 
belief, kneels to accept a larger trust, shoulders 
his burden of responsibility, and starts off with 
it proudly. These are infrequent experiences, 
for the ample reason that such events are the 
portion of the few. We must find our hope in 
these occasional elevations of youth into the 
estate of potential greatness. It is true that al- 
though many are called, few are chosen; but so 
long as even a few are chosen, and know that 
they are chosen, and conduct themselves as be- 
comes the chosen, civilization is secure. 


IIT 


The young man who would inquire into the 
teachings of Jesus, which were directed, pri- 


78 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


marily, toward the heart of youth, can hardly 
fail to be stirred—if these parables mean any- 
thing to him at all—by studying the charge 
delivered by the Man of Galilee to the two 
juniors who belonged to his group of disciples. 
This story demands careful perusal. Its mes- 
sage is not to be had at the price of a casual 
reading. It is essentially intended for the adol- 
escent. It appeals to the spirit of adventure 
which is the particular property of youth. 
Early in Jesus’ ministry John and James, 
brothers, had become attached to his company, 
probably attracted to the Master because he,- 
too, was youthful and in love with nature. His 
interest in birds and flowers, field and stream, 
made him easy for youth to follow. True, there 
was the shadow of eventual tragedy hovering 
over him, but it had not depressed him. That 
tragedy was to be part of his vocation. He had 
accepted it without a whimper or a protest. 
That John and James were normal youths, 
impetuous, radical, careless of consequences, and 
inclined to be boisterous, may be implied by the 
fact that they had been nicknamed “The Bo- 
anerges,” meaning “‘sons of impulse.”’ Doubt- 
less these young fellows had followed mostly for 
the sake of this rare companionship which they 
found in Jesus. They may have sensed his er- 
rand in part. It must have been a matter of 
some satisfaction to them to be associated with 
a movement promotive of human welfare. But 


“MANY ARE CALLED” 79 


it may have been more or less of a lark with 
them. The fact that at night they had nowhere 
to lay their heads, and must camp under the 
stars, was no hardship. Perhaps they enjoyed 
it. It did not distress them that they were often 
hungry and required to, exercise considerable 
ingenuity to find enough to eat. They were sol- 
diers of fortune. And it may have been because 
of this youthful buoyancy, optimism, and free- 
dom from care that their Master loved them so 
dearly and apparently saw so much more of 
them than of the majority of their colleagues. 
But, notwithstanding they had received special 
attention and had entered so intimately into the 
life of their leader, these Boanerges had never 
been awakened to the gravity of the position 
into which they had come by virtue of his large 
investment in them. 

The circumstances of their awakening were 
intensely dramatic. It was only a few days be- 
fore the tragedy that was to make a wooden 
cross the everlasting sign of supreme altruistic 
endeavor. There had been a short vacation 
tour, and now the little company was en route 
to the capital to participate in the celebration 
of a national feast. Huge crowds would be there. 
The presence of this influential Galilean would 
excite attention. The priesthood, already com- 
mitted to the belief that the safety of their for- 
mal religion demanded his death, would be 
greatly annoyed by his popularity with the 


80 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


home-coming pilgrims. Doubtless the end was 
in sight. So, he told his friends, as they walked, 
that if they had questions to ask or requests to 
make, this was the time. There was no telling 
what might happen upon their arrival in Jeru- 
salem. 

It is at this juncture that the sons of impulse 
rise to the occasion with a somewhat startling 
request. With all the naiveteé of youth, they un- 
ashamedly asked for special seats to be reserved 
for them in Jesus’ ultimate kingdom. They had 
at least this much warrant for their presump- 
tion: they had been given special attention here; 
there seemed no reason why they should not be 
singled out for such honors in the mysterious 
afterwhile. Perhaps it did not occur to them 
that their request was in such bad taste, pro- 
posed, as it was, in the presence of others who 
had been quite as loyal, though without so much 
recognition. Indeed, the main trouble with 
their attitude was exactly this: they had accus- 
tomed themselves to take quite too much for 
granted in their acceptance of special privi- 
leges. 

Said they, with bland assurance: ‘“‘Grant that 
we may sit, the one on thy right and the other 
on thy left, in thy glory.”” Their Master in- 
stantly said, in substance: “That distinction is 
not mine to confer. There will be places of pre- 
ferment there, but they will be assigned by our 
Father. I have nothing to do with that matter. 


“MANY ARE CALLED” 81 


But, had I that responsibility, by what right do 
you ask for such honors? I am now en route to 
voluntary tragedy. I shall be handed a cup of 
pain and grief, and I mean to drain that cup to 
its last bitter dregs! What have you done, what 
will you do, what can you do, to entitle you to 
a seat at my side?” 

At this point we customarily lose our way to 
the heart of this story. We see only the annoy- 
ing fact that these young men, of whom we had 
thought so highly, have committed an almost 
unpardonable impertinence. We notice the dark 
looks on the faces of the other disciples. They 
are shaking their heads and muttering their 
serious disapproval. But the real story does 
not lie in that quarter—granting that these 
young men were impudent and selfish and dis- 
regardful of other people’s feelings. The real 
story resides in the fact that they were chal- 
lenged! There was no taunt in the voice that 
uttered this gripping query: “‘Are ye able to 
drink of my cup ?”—but there was a dare in it 
that stirred them to their depths; and, instantly, 
unteservedly, they answered: “‘We are able!” 

The awakening had come! These impetuous 
youths, shaking themselves loose from the leth- 
argy that had clung to them until now, suddenly 
seeing their masterful friend’s heroism in a new 
light, and their own obligation to carry on if 
they were to justify his love for them, accepted 
his challenge! And the Master, no less stirred 


82 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


than they, recognized their consecration with 
the significant words: “‘Then ye shall, indeed, 
drink of my cup.” He knew that whoever in 
this company might falter when the time came 
for risky deeds, John and James would prove 
their valor. And they did. 

Are ye able?—that is the question. Some 
people are not able. To fail in a test like that 
would be no disgrace at all, were it proposed 
to the great mass who have not been trained to 
think in terms of self-surrender. It would have 
been the wrong kind of an appeal to make to the 
rigid, conservative, unadventurous mind of ma- 
turity. It may be doubted if Jesus would have 
thrown down that challenge at the feet of old 
Zebedee, their father. But he knew the spirit 
of youth, and he challenged them. 

It is not beyond belief that he is still disposed 
to challenge our right to the privileges we have 
accepted with such ease. Of course, he would 
not challenge just anybody. But if the youth 
who has become conscious of his responsibility 
to civilization listens attentively, he may hear 
the equivalent of Jesus’ challenge to the Boaner- 
ges. ““You have become the legatee of a bequest 
more rich than you can imagine,” declares the 
voice. “You hope that future days will bring 
you honor and preferment, by way of your ex- 
ceptional privileges. By what right do you in- 
dulge that hope? In what degree, and how, and 
why, are you entitled to distinctions which the 


“MANY ARE CALLED” 83 


majority may not have? Are ye able to drink 
of my cup?” 

Not often in the course of a lifetime is a man 
brought face to face with a searching query that 
grips and shakes him to the very foundations of 
his soul. But when that moment comes he 
should stand in awe of its ultimate consequences. 
His decision may determine the value of his 
whole life and the nature of his immortality. 


CHAPTER IV 
“TO HIM THAT KNOCKETH” 
Niue is more definitely set forth in 


the sayings of Jesus than his conviction 

that men should make heavy demands 
of life. Any successful quest, he declared, must 
begin with faith. Mountains could be removed 
by faith. No adventure was possible without it, 
and any adventure would achieve reward by 
way of it. 

A few of the parables intended to inspire the 
courage necessary to bombard life for its essen- 
tial benefits contain a hint of kindly humor—an 
interesting sidelight on the mind of the Master. 
The fact that he was a man acquainted with 
grief must not mislead us into the belief that he 
lacked the capacity to appreciate a droll situa- 
tion. Persons who suspect that to predicate of 
Jesus a sense of humor is an act of irreverence, 
should reflect that the absence of this faculty 
would have made him of sub-normal mind. Any 
one who can read without a smile the story of 
the poor widow in her dealings with the unjust 
judge is seriously lacking in imagination. 

This widow sought the aid of a judge, hoping 
for a decision which would relieve her of the 
oppression put upon her by an adversary. The 

84. 


“TO HIM THAT KNOCKETH” 85 


parable does not state the nature of this op- 
pression. The adversary may have been a cruel 
landlord, or an extortionate usurer who had 
lent the woman some money. But, whatever 
offense he had committed against her, she wished 
to be avenged. The judge was frankly disinter- 
ested in her case, and told her so. He went fur- 
ther, and assured her that she had no case. She 
was to go her way and make no more efforts to 
enlist his support. 

The next day she was back in his office, mo- 
notonously rehearsing her story again, quite as 
if it were her first appearance there. The judge 
impatiently broke her off in the middle of a long 
sentence, and told her, with much firmness, that 
she must stop. He had passed upon her case. 
It was a closed incident, so far as he was con- 
cerned. | 

Next morning the judicial chambers had been 
no more than opened when the widow arrived, 
making no loud complaint, but insistent upon 
telling her story. And the judge, in considerable 
exasperation, put her out, and warned her 
against a return. 

After that, for a long time, the days were all 
alike in that every morning brought the poor 
widow to the judge’s office. She became his 
most steady and perplexing customer. And at 
length she wore him out. One day, when he felt 
he had endured all he could stand from that 
quarter, he told her to begin at the beginning 


86 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


and tell him all about it, which she did, gladly 
and fully; and when she was through, he said: 
“You have no case. You have been appealing 
solely to sentiment. I am not a sentimental 
person. You have asked me to do something 
about this ‘for God’s sake,’ and I do not believe 
in God. You have suggested that I act in this 
matter for humanitarian reasons. I am not a 
philanthropist. But I have become so weary of 
seeing you here, that I shall, and hereby do, 
avenge you of your adversary.” 

If there was not a merry smile on the faces of 
Jesus’ auditors when he told that story, it must 
have been a very dull crowd. Perhaps it was be- 
cause they enjoyed it so much that he told 
another in the same vein. 

Unexpected guests had arrived at midnight. 
Hospitable inquiry disclosed the fact that the 
belated arrivals had missed their supper. Fur- 
ther domestic investigation revealed that there 
was no bread in the house. The next-door neigh- 
bors were appealed to. The anxious host went 
to their door and knocked repeatedly. Presently 
a muffled voice asked him what he wanted, and 
he told his story. They were in an awkward 
dilemma at his house. Hungry guests and no 
bread. 

The neighbors told him he would have to 
solve his problem without their assistance. They 
were all in bed. They did not wish to be dis- 
turbed. Would he kindly go away? He would 


“TO HIM THAT KNOCKETH” 87 


not. He considered them his best chance that 
night; so he stayed at the door and continued to 
set forth the seriousness of his predicament un- 
til they decided that the only course left to them, 
if they were to get any sleep that night, was to 
accommodate him. They groped their way to 
the kitchen, found the bread, opened the door 
wide enough to put it through, and the borrower 
returned home, happy that his hospitality might 
now be offered without apologies. 

And if it were true that by unquenchable 
perseverance one might secure a favorable deci- 
sion from a callous judge and an accommodation 
from a selfish neighbor, how much more hope- 
fully one might make requests of one’s Father! 
What human parent, if his child asked for bread, 
would give him a stone; or, if he asked for a 
fish, would give him a serpent? If we have not, 
it is because we ask not! This was Jesus’ firm 
belief in respect to men’s demands of God. We 
are committing no impertinence, or irreverence, 
by laying siege, through faith and prayer, for 
the larger benefits. 

If one may estimate the attitude of Christ 
toward great adventures of faith by the fact that 
most of the adventures and the greatest of the 
adventures have been made by men propelled 
by his spirit, it is to be believed that he has the 
warmest admiration for men who set out to do 
the impossible; for investigators who are willing 
to keep on, undaunted by discouragement, un- 


88 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


til they find what they seek. ‘‘He that putteth 
his hand to the plough,” said Jesus, “‘and turn- 
eth back, is not worthy of me.’ This statement 
is easily understood when one remembers how 
diligently, and at what mighty cost, this Gali- 
lean teacher applied himself to his life’s ambi- 
tion. He, too, had made heavy demands of 
God. When it became apparent that to achieve 
his goal he must consent to be hung high upon 
a cross, he declared: “‘If I be lifted up, I shall 
draw all men unto me!” That was a large prom- 
ise. It was predicated upon a tremendous de- 
mand which he proposed to make upon his 
Father. He could not deliver to the world a 
legacy like that unless destiny delivered to him 
an extraordinary opportunity and an unprece- 
dented experience. 

Nothing was more real and practicable, in the 
opinion of Jesus, than the resuits of sincere and 
persistent prayer; but a man must not ask for 
power to perform trivial acts or gratify merely 
selfish desires. No matter how strong his faith, 
he must not try to turn stones into bread to 
assuage his own hunger. He must make no 
faith-leaps from the pinnacle of a temple to sur- 
prise an audience into respect for his trust in 
Providence. People who make large requests of 
_ God must have better reasons for their prayer 
than a desire to find increased physical comfort, 
relief from heavy obligations, or satisfaction for 
their vanities. 


“TO HIM THAT KNOCKETH” 89g 


IT 


Along with his advice to “launch out into the 
deep” under the propulsion of faith, Jesus cau- 
tions against any mere dickering with destiny, 
whereby one promises a definite amount of labor 
in consideration of a specific reward. The ad- 
venturer-by-faith is to understand, at the out- 
set, that he is not working for wages. 

This does not mean that a man may not defi- 
nitely bargain with life—promising to pay every 
instalment on time, and with high expectation 
of a commensurate recompense. There can be 
no question about Jesus’ own attitude toward 
a fixed goal of endeavor. He knew exactly what 
he wanted to do. He knew the price attached to 
that achievement. He was able and willing to 
pay it. To the pursuance of that goal, all minor 
attractions gave precedence. 

In his own case life would be brief. He was 
aware of his necessity to make every minute 
count at its full value of sixty seconds. This 
urge, however, was held in admirable balance 
by an utter freedom from that sense of hurry 
which dissipates energy and produces mental 
dishevelment. Alongside the fact that he wast- 
ed no words; advised that conversation should 
never descend to commonplace tittle-tattle; 
squandered no time; and conserved every en- 
ergy—alongside the fact of his complete absorp- 


go THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


tion in his important life-work—there is no rec- 
ord that anybody ever saw him running; nobody 
ever heard him say that he was harassed with 
the fear that he might not accomplish every- 
thing he had set out to do; nobody ever saw 
him out of breath, or distracted, or stampeded 
by the heavy exactions of his own programme. 

Doubtless this is to be accounted for on the 
ground of his absolute trust in the guidance of 
his Father. That consciousness steadied him 
through all circumstances. When the storm 
broke over little Galilee, on the night when he 
and his disciples were effecting a laborious cross- 
ing, the Master slept. His friends were at their 
wits’ end; racing futilely from one end of the 
boat to the other, tugging at ropes, fumbling 
with sails, in a panic of fear. Jesus slept. He 
was in his [‘ather’s world. That world was in 
the grip of strange elemental forces; but they 
were physical forces which had no sovereignty 
over the larger affairs of the spirit. The spirit 
was the only thing that really mattered. One 
may suppose that the complete confidence of 
Jesus in this principle of guidance was never dis- 
closed more perfectly in any recorded experience 
of the Master’s life than in the ineffable calm- 
ness of his repose through the shrieking blasts 
of a tempest that had hurled his disciples into 
a pandemonium of fear. 

Of course, there are many illustrations of this 
incomparable poise with which he moved about 


“TO HIM THAT KNOCKETH” gI 


serenely among the fear-harried men of an age 
steeped in superstition and honeycombed with 
all manner of strange phobias. There is a de- 
cided thrill in the story which pictures Jesus in 
the Garden of Gethsemane, coolly facing a mob 
with an instinctive courage which made these 
men stand baffled in his presence until he quietly 
informed them to proceed with their task. But 
we dare not make too much of this scene, in an 
attempt to arrive at the uniqueness of Jesus’ 
poise, for there are many tales of courage, predi- 
cated of men of lesser breed, who walked into 
danger for duty’s sake, A iiecnnels and 
with steady stride. We must put this down to 
the credit of a conscious courage which, in mo- 
ments of emergency, when both principle and 
pride are on trial, is often exhibited by men 
whom stern circumstance has put into tight 
places. 

But there is a uniqueness in the manner of 
courage that may be called unconscious, resi- 
dent in the subliminal self; an automatic, built- 
in courage that responds to tests as unhesitat- 
ingly as the physical hand withdraws, by reflex 
neural action, when accidentally encountering a 
flame. Jesus sleeps through the storm! His 
subconscious mind was utterly free of fear. It 
was free of fear because of his unreserved trust 
in his Father’s protection. This must have been 
the secret of his poise. This may explain why, 
in the midst of circumstances which would have 


Q2 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


shaken a man of smaller capacity, he retains 
his grasp upon this impenetrable tranquillity. 

It will be important for us to realize the sig- 
nificance of this mental attribute of Jesus; for, 
as has been indicated, it was found in combina- 
tion with his unswerving pursuance of a fixed 
goal, which he knew he must reach in a period 
of time tragically brief. In other words, he was 
not simply drifting with the tide! Coupled with 
this sense of trust in Providence, went a resolute 
ambition to perform his appointed work. But 
he knew that his Father would permit no physi- 
cal danger to frustrate the performance of his 
life-task. There was no storm at sea, no pang 
of desert hunger, no risk of safety, no threat of 
violence able to interfere with the full outwork- 
ing of that mission. 

Only Jesus himself ever knew to its fullest 
ecstasy the peculiar type of joy afforded by that 
consciousness of insurance. He tried to com- 
municate it to his disciples. It was his hope that 
they, too, might lay hold upon that joy which 
no man could ever take away from them. It 
was to him “the more abundant life.” And 
when he glances about him at the mental estate 
of men who, although possessed of large erudi- 
tion, or popularity, or material wealth, but com- 
pletely undermined with fears, comparing their 
restlessness, uncertainty, and apparent harass- 
ment with the tranquillity he had found, it is 
small wonder that he gazes upon the things of 


“TO HIM THAT KNOCKETH” 93 


life, which moth and rust and thieves destroy, 
with a quiet indifference we are quite unable to 
comprehend. 

Now, one may presumably understand a 
temperament like that, based upon a mystical 
resignation to life’s vicissitudes, sitting supine- 
ly waiting, with a Brahministic ‘‘go-by-mad- 
world”’ attitude toward all natural human en- 
gagements. The Hindoo does it, and does it 
well. But Jesus did not find nee calmness by 
sequestration in some inaccessible corner where, 
undisturbed and unidentified with active life, he 
might take solitary counsel of his own well-dis- 
ciplined soul. Herein lies the mystery of the 
Jesus fmind. He lived that manner of life in 
the very ruck of contumely, criticism, rebuffs, 
taunts, and threats, on the part of his foes, and 
cowardice, selfishness, and petulance on the 
part of the group to whom he was presently to 
entrust his message. Jesus sought no cloistral 
cell; no monastic insularity against the turbu- 
lent world. Neither was he a mere bystander, 
smiling, patiently and patronizingly, over the 
futilities of men’s strenuous endeavor. He knew 
the problems of vine-growing, wheat-raising, 
tree-pruning, brick-making, and the prosaic de- 
tails of domestic duty in the house. He knew the 
problems of wages, taxes, and the perplexities of 
citizenship under a provincial government. He 
was no impractical visionary. But, whatever 
may have been the versatility of his interests, 


94 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


he, himself, was in pursuit of a fixed goal. He 
was not hurried toward it. He was not worried 
about it. But he was going in that direction 
with majestic strides, and an indomitable will 
that would not be deflected from the path he 
had charted for his journey. 

Jesus tried to communicate this unswerving 
sense of direction to his disciples. Once a man 
had begun a thing, he should see it through! 
Whatever reluctance or timidity he expected to 
display should be considered, and settled with, 
before setting forth upon the adventure. A 
young rabbi who, in an impetuous moment, an- 
nounced that he was prepared to follow, any- 
where, was cautioned that the retinue of the 
Man of Galilee frequently slept out under the 
open sky. ‘Count the cost,” is the message of 
many a parable. The king with ten thousand 
troops must not rush into battle with the king 
who has twenty thousand. The ambitious 
tower-builder must count his brick before mak- 
ing the excavation. 

Nor is this advice restricted to the aspiration 
to achieve celestial reward, but to any and all 
of life’s worthy endeavors. Before you set forth 
upon an adventure, decide whether you have 
the capacity, courage, and patience to see it 
through to the end. But—and here is the evi- 
dent solution to the Jesus type of propulsion— 
once having decided to do the thing, then do 
it! Once you have determined upon a worth- 


“TO HIM THAT KNOCKETH” 95 


while goal, consider no obstacle in your path 
too formidable to be overcome! 

It is at this point that most of life’s unsuccess- 
fulness may be explained. Many persons have 
occasional surges of desire to achieve important 
gains. They are overswept with tidal waves of 
desire to be and do something great. They make 
New Year resolutions and birthday commit- 
ments, and voluntarily assume valorous vows 
under the emotional lift and drive of some per- 
sonality who has momentarily galvanized them 
into the semblance of courage. They impute to 
themselves a spiritual capacity they do not pos- 
sess and an intrepidity they cannot maintain. 

Jesus was in favor of a man’s staking off a 
claim for his life, consistent to his capacity, and 
then working that claim for all it was worth. 
One may imagine, as a typical case, the ambition 
of some well-favored youth who had determined, 
at the age of ten, that he would become a sur- 
geon. He has not arrived at this decision on 
some cheap basis, such as that he would have 
easy access in this profession to an enviable po- 
sition in his social group, or live unhampered by 
the tyranny of bells and whistles summoning 
him to work. He is motivated by a desire to 
render service. 

Whatever force endeavors to cross his path 
from the age of ten until he draws the drapery 
of his couch about him at seventy, that would 
deflect, retard, or distract him in his steady 


96 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


drive toward that fixed goal, is obliged to wait, — 
like palpitating traffic facing a “‘Stop”’ signal on 
a congested corner. As a little lad he will not 
read his book, no matter how interesting, un- 
less the light is properly adjusted, for he dares 
not risk eye-strain. He will not play baseball, 
for he cannot take chances on a stiff knuckle. 
He laboriously practises on the piano, which he 
despises, for the sole purpose of winning dex- 
terity with his fingers. No narcotic, however 
apparently innocuous, ever comes into his ex- 
perience, because he insists upon absolute nerve- 
control. Invitations to dissipation and adven- 
ture involving hazard of accident are always 
spurned, but not without some heroism. It is 
dificult for him to withstand the taunts of his 
playmates and the criticism of his elders; who 
may interpret his self-sacrifices on the ground 
of cowardice or assumed superiority. 

But people can tease and revile and misun- 
derstand and even punish; he goes forward 
toward his goal! He is going to be a surgeon. 
He is going to be the best surgeon that his 
strength, talent, courage, and capacity will per- 
mit. He falls in love; but he cannot marry until 
the term of his professional training and the 
long interneship is over. The young woman 
forces him to decide whether his profession is 
more important than she 1s. He decides in favor 
of his profession. That, too, in the face of the 
fact that he loves the girl. But his life-work is 


“TO HIM THAT KNOCKETH” 97 


something that takes instant and constant pre- 
cedence over anything and everything that may 
arise in his experience! He has put his hand to 
the plough; and he will neither turn back, nor 
look back, nor think back, until he has seen his 
furrow through! 

If all men had this kind of motivation, or if 
any considerable number of men were driven by 
this type of propulsion, we would have sighted 
Utopia long ago. 

John records of Jesus: ‘‘He must needs go 
through Samaria.” We are not told why; and, 
maybe, if we knew why, we might consider the 
reason relatively unimportant. But it was not 
unimportant tu Jesus. He must needs go 
through Samaria, albeit that was not the usual 
way to travel from the town he had just left to 
the town he expected to reach. Whatever he 
did, and wherever he went, there was a “must- 
needs” motive back of it. 

He is driven forward, but not on the run. 
He has time to talk to fishermen about their 
catch. He has time to notice little children. 
He has time to saunter down to the Pool of 
Bethesda, and talk to a cripple. He is not so 
self-absorbed that he cannot identify Nathaniel 
under the fig-tree. Even when on trial for his 
life he is more interested in finding out what 
Pilate privately thinks of him and his cause, 
than in his own acquittal. Nothing escapes his 
notice—the beauty of the flowers; changing 


98 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


clouds; a little man, astride the limb of a tree, 
waiting for him to pass; the inscription on a 
penny; the fidelity of a dog—but nothing de- 
flected him from his goal. He saw everything, 
and was turned aside by nothing! 

His life-work was completed only at that mo- 
ment when he bowed his head and murmured: 
“Tt is finished.”” So often our life’s programme 
is too short, too small, too lean. We outlive it. 
We finish it, and have years left on our hands, 
without employment. Jesus’ programme and 
his days were of equal length. He and it were 
brought to a crisis together. It was a glorious 
way to live; it was a glorious way to die. 
“*What wilt thou?’ quoth God. ‘Pay for it, 
and take it!’” 


Ifl 


Notwithstanding the importance of starting 
early and concentrating upon a definite goal, in 
the belief that absolute devotion to one’s calling 
will justify the sacrifice and labor involved, 
Jesus wants all the ambitious and industrious 
to understand that if they knock at life’s door 
perseveringly and make heavy demands of des- 
tiny they must take what they get and be sat- 
isfied. 

Abraham of old, believing in a Promised Land 
somewhere, was willing to start, not knowing 
whither he went. He found the Promised Land, 


“TO HIM THAT KNOCKETH” 99 


and the story was handed down to his posterity. 
Many another man has set forth, with no more 
indefinite destination than that, and has found 
nothing. 

Jesus was in favor of the planned life, the life 
that knew where it was headed. But the man 
who deliberately made demands of life was to 
keep his bargain. If other people, at the end of 
the journey, seemed to have as much as he, 
there must be no complaint. If others had ac- 
quired a great deal more than he, of desirable 
possessions for which he had not bargained, he 
must not whine. If he strikes a bargain with 
life, to see him on to a fixed goal, in consideration 
of hard service, he must be satisfied. If it brings 
him honor but leaves him poor, he must be con- 
tent. If it lifts him where he can draw all men 
unto him, but demands that this eminence shall 
be a cross, he must take the consequences! 

Perhaps the fullest exposition of this princi- 
ple in the teachings of Jesus occurs in his para- 
ble of the laborers in the vineyard, to which we 
must now turn. It is a parable that cannot be 
understood at all, unless one knows the exact 
circumstances under which it was spoken. 

A rich young nobleman had come inquiring 
about the conditions of everlasting life in Jesus’ 
new spiritual commonwealth. He wished to be 
assured of the eternal persistence of his soul. 
This was his highest demand of destiny, and he 
eagerly sought the terms. 


100 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


In an effort to discover by what route his 
young acquaintance had already attempted to 
realize this promise, Jesus induced him to ex- 
pound his creed and divulge his ethical pro- 
gramme. 

It was found that this rich young man had 
diligently kept all the laws from his youth up. 
Indeed, he had not contented himself with obe- 
dience to the Mosaic decalogue, but had gradu- 
ated from the cold austerity of those ‘“‘thou 
shalt nots” into the warmer atmosphere of 
“thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” And 
upon the conclusion of this examination, Jesus 
said: “If thou wilt be perfect is 

Here was a very large contract! Jesus fre- 
quently felicitated people upon their faith ad- 
ventures; but only once, so far as the record in- 
forms us, do we find him telling a man he lacked 
only one point of perfection. “If thou wilt be 
perfect, go and sell what thou hast, distribute 
it to the poor; then come and follow me.”’ 

One surmises that we are not expected to un- 
derstand, from Jesus’ statement to this young 
man, that all capital to be rightly used must be 
distributed among the poor. No sound system 
of economics would ever sanction a course like 
that. Were this to become a general practice 
throughout organized society (which is ex- 
tremely unlikely), there would be a temporary 
elation felt by the poor, who would rejoice in a 
few days of unearned and unaccustomed pros- 





tO EM THAD RNOCKE TERS: Tor 


perity. Having been ever denied the luxuries 
of their superiors in material possessions, they 
would probably run the whole gamut of extrav- 
agance briefly, pauperizing themselves magnifi- 
cently into the temporary gratification of hith- 
erto suppressed desires, and generating new 
appetites for the stimulants of pleasure and the 
narcotics of leisure—appetites not long to be 
appeased by a rapidly depleting fortune. Em- 
ployment agencies are always of more perma- 
nent value to the poor than bread-lines and 
soup-kitchens. 

Jesus never advocated any _ topsy-turvy 
scheme of filling the hands of idleness with un- 
deserved wealth, to the impoverishment of the 
capitalistic forces which provide the rank and 
file with an opportunity to earn an honest wage 
at self-respecting labor. How frequently do his 
parables revolve about some central figure of 
wealth and influence who makes it possible for 
other men to live. How vigorously he pleads for 
loyalty and industry and the investment of 
heart-interest in the labor men perform for 
wages. 

In the specific case of this young nobleman, 
however, Jesus needed and wanted him as a per- 
sonal friend and follower. Here was a splendid 
type of conservative, cultured, law-abiding, 
spiritually aspiring manhood. But the Master 
knew that the rich ruler would never be able to 
ft himself into the nomadic life of his poverty- 


102 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


stricken crew of Galilean fishermen until and 
unless he had put himself into a position to un- 
derstand their circumstances and share them. 
Jesus wanted his new friend to come and follow; 
but he could not advise it if the recruit expected 
to come with every pocket full of gold. If the 
new gospel was to have a chance in this world, 
it would have to begin its work with the com- 
mon people. The young nobleman would have 
to let go of his fortune. This he was unwilling 
to do. 

There was no caustic comment made upon 
his refusal to comply. Perhaps he thought his 
reasons for declining were good. It is possible 
he may have thought—may have said—that a 
distribution of his fortune to the children of in- 
digence would throw many honest wage-earners, 
who looked to him for their daily bread, out 
into the ranks of the beggars. It may be he 
honestly felt that it was his duty to conserve 
his estate. 

Viewing his problem from this distance, it is 
easy to see how large a mistake he made. In the 
light of history, there was nothing this young 
man could ever have done with his money 
nearly so important as to give it away, that he 
might make common cause with this little com- 
pany and march with them into a deathless 
glory. But at the moment he could not make 
that decision. He turned away sadly, and the 
Master watched him go, also heavy of heart. 


, JOCTIMS THAT! KNOCKETH” = 103 


Every eye in the little company of disciples 
was focussed on the leader’s serious face. They 
knew he was disappointed. They wondered if 
he had overlooked the fact that they had given 
up their all. Peter, as usual, becomes spokes- 
man for the company. Peter remarks of himself 
and his friends that they had made this very 
sacrifice which the young ruler had been unable 
to render. One smiles over the wide disparity 
between the extent of Peter’s estate and the 
wealth of the nobleman. One remembers the 
boat that Peter had drawn up on the beach, in 
the neighborhood of Capernaum, and the oars 
in that boat and the old bailing-bucket and the 
mended seine. Peter had left all and followed. 

But whoever had left anything, however lit- 
tle or much, to espouse the new cause, would 
receive his reward, here and hereafter. Jesus 
declared it, with solemn conviction. And then, 
apropos of his thesis, he told a story, as follows: 

The owner of a vineyard, at the harvest sea- 
son, when there was much work to be done 
quickly, went out in the early morning into the 
market-place to hire laborers. He found some 
men there who had come to the market-place for 
this purpose. He asked them if they would 
work that day in his vineyard, and they said 
they would. The price would be one denarius, 
they declared. The price was high, but he agreed 
with them. He did not quarrel with them. 
There was no argument. He agreed. (The word 


104 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


in the original from which “agreed” is derived 
is also the word which, in the form of a noun, 
became the parent of our word “‘symphony.”’) 
He “harmonized himself with them for one de- 
narius.” And they went to work in the vineyard. 

But there was much to do that day in the 
vineyard, and these industrious, albeit high- 
priced, laborers would be unable to do it all. 
So at nine o’clock the owner of the vineyard 
went into the market-place again and found 
men standing there idle. He asked them if they 
would like to work in his vineyard, and they 
assented. He told them he would give them 
whatever their services were worth to him. 
They considered the proposition fair enough, 
and went to work. 

Again at noon, and at three, and at five, he 
went to the market-place, and secured addi- 
tional help. In none of these cases did the idle 
men attempt to dicker over a wage. He assured 
them that he would pay what was right, and 
they were satisfied that he would be fair with 
them. 

When the day’s work was done, the laborers 
all filed out through the gate. The last to come 
were the first to go. To their surprise and de- 
light, each man—no matter when he had begun 
to work—received one denarius. Came now the 
dickerers of the early morning, self-conscious of 
their fatigue. It is quite possible that during the 
day they had loosely organized themselves into 


“TO HIM THAT KNOCKETH” 105 


a little exclusive caste of their own. They were 
the Hard Workers. All day long, at intervals, 
new crews had been coming into the vineyard— 
people who were so unprofessional that they had 
not so much as inquired what wage they were 
to receive, much less striven to drive a shrewd 
bargain. Doubtless the Hard Workers did a 
great deal of talking among themselves that 
day about the length of their arduous toil as 
compared with the care-free attitude of the 
casuals. 

And so, as they stood by the gate in the eve- 
ning, very ostentatiously mopping their steam- 
ing faces with their sleeves and heaving mighty 
sighs indicative of great weariness, watching 
these various groups of late-comers receiving, 
every man, one denarius, they thought they 
should have more. But they had driven a bar- 
gain for a definite reward. They had not left it 
to the owner of the vineyard to say what he 
thought they ought to receive. They had en- 
gaged for one denarius; and, when they passed 
the wicket, that is what they got. They com- 
plained bitterly. 

Perhaps Jesus glanced at Simon Peter, at this 
point of the story, to make sure it was register- 
ing. It would be good for the fisherman’s soul. 
So—went on the speaker—the Hard Workers 
complained. They had borne the burden and 
the heat of the day, and here they were being 
paid exactly the same wages as the casual labor- 


106 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


ers, some of whom had come so late as an hour 
before sundown. 

“But did you not agree with me,” asked the 
owner of the vineyard, “‘for one denarius? Did 
you not say that this was your price? Did you 
not make this as a demand, and have I not 
complied with your demand?” They admitted 
this to be true. ‘“Then,” said he, ‘“‘take what is 
thine and go.” 

It is beyond thought that Jesus intended us 
to believe that society would be just as well off 
to loaf all day, and stroll into the market-place 
about 5.00 P. M., wondering if some benevolent 
person might invite these nonchalant idlers to 
work for an hour, with assurance of a whole 
day’s day. The lesson does not lie in that quar- 
ter at all. 

Obviously, what the Master was intending to 
teach to his disciples was the fact that if one 
makes heavy demands of life, and promises to 
pay for exceptional privileges by assuming ex- 
traordinary responsibilities, then one must be 
content with the bargain. Jesus does not de- 
-nounce the man who hammers at the doors of 
life until they open to him. Indeed, his admira- 
tion and approbation are tendered to the man 
who makes a definite programme of life in ad- 
vance and consecrates himself to its fulfilment. 
But if it should so happen that certain other 
people, who have taken their cares less seri- 
ously, are able at the close of the day to exhibit 


“TO HIM THAT* KNOCKETH” 107 


about as much in apparent happiness, influence, 
and the intangibles of a successful career, we 
who have bargained are to take our wages and 
go our way, without jealousy or petulance or 
an air of having unduly martyred ourselves. 

For there is, unfortunately, a distinct ‘‘mar- 
tyr” type, people who resolutely set out to bear 
the burden and the heat of the day. They doa 
great deal of talking about how heavy the bas- 
kets are and how hot the sun is in the vineyard. 
They either consciously or unconsciously organ- 
ize themselves into the Ancient Order of the 
Hard Workers. They make hard work of their 
philanthropies, and sometimes turn their finest 
deeds into lugubrious farces. They give the im- 
pression that whoever else picks grapes in the 
vineyard is an impostor. ‘They live desperate 
lives, leaping, watch in hand, from committee- 
meeting to conference-luncheon, which they feel 
obliged to leave, before the dessert is served, to 
be in at the session of the commission to outline 
a new budget. They are, indeed, bearing the 
burden and heat of the day, and nobody knows 
it quite so well or talks of it so freely as they 
themselves. 

Jesus was not disowning his disciples. He was 
not belittling their sacrifices. He is appreciative 
of all the honest and industrious toil his friends, 
then and now, invest in his vineyard, just so 
we do not, at the end of the day, or at any time 
during the day, go into high revolt because other 


108 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


people, who were content to take life as it came, 
receive, every man of them, one denarius. 

He pleads with us, who esteem ourselves his 
disciples, to cultivate such magnitude of mind 
that we, although we may have borne the bur- 
den and heat of the day, can be sincerely glad 
that the casuals are treated generously. 


CHAPTER V 
“UNTO WHOMSOEVER MUCH IS GIVEN” 
} ‘HE potter in Keramos chanted at his 


wheel: “Some must follow, and some 

command, though all be made of clay.” 
But the problem of relative human capacities is 
not quite so simple as that, though it might seem 
so to a potter. 

In respect to their co-ordinated abilities and 
responsibilities, men cannot be grouped into 
commanders and followers. Spiritual biology 
would recognize a vast array of species, as re- 
gards humanity’s efforts in the world, and these 
species are not to be categoried under less than 
three main genera: namely, the driven, the led, 
and the commissioned. 

Our thought just now will centre at the point 
of Jesus’ admonitions to the last of these groups, 
but we cannot well consider the case of the com- 
missioned until we have had a hasty glance at 
the others—the driven, first, who comprise the 
large majority of all people who on earth do 
dwell. 

No optimistic expectation need ever be had 
of the driven. The fatuous statistics of senti- 
mentality may endeavor to prove that if any 

109 


110 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


considerable number of these persons were to 
invest, each of them, his one talent, even at so 
little as three per cent, with a usurer, civiliza- 
tion would presently be sighting the suburbs of 
the City Delectable. But so few of the single 
talents ever function in behalf of the general 
estate belonging to the social commonwealth of 
souls, that the carrying charge on this account 
is infinitely larger than the feeble interest ac- 
cruing therefrom. 

The members of this huge majority trudge 
along dully, at their best when doing exactly 
what they are told to do by their betters; stolid, 
except when reacting to urges directed at their 
undisciplined emotions; silent, except when 
made temporarily articulate by discontentment; 
a great, unassorted, miscellaneous multitude, to 
be viewed always with compassion and fre- 
quently with some anxiety. 

These are the driven, to whom not very much 
has been given, and of whom not very much is 
required or expected. Felicitations are extended 
them, not in consideration of great valor or no- 
table achievement, but on the strength of their 
having been able to operate, even feebly, under 
their own steam. When we applaud them, it is 
because they have contrived to keep out of the 
almshouse or the reformatory, and have not 
actually become an economic liability to society. 

The second group—not nearly so strong nu- 
merically, but thrice as strong, every other way 


“WHOMSOEVER MUCH IS GIVEN” 111 


considered, can be led; not unthinkingly, as 
sheep are led—but led. They adapt and apply 
the discoveries, inventions, and inspirations of 
their leaders to the practical work of the world, 
to which obligation they are faithful in varying 
degrees, according to their capacity. And ciy- 
ilization would be in poor case without them. 
Doubtless it could be shown that the real hope 
of human society rests heavier upon them than 
we have thought; and it may be believed that 
if as large a relative percentage of the class pres- 
ently to be mentioned were to accept their larger 
trust with as much doglike fidelity to duty as 
the led, the Golden Days would be listed in the 
almanac a great deal sooner than appears at the 
present hour. 

Moreover, the faithfulness of the led is not 
always or often rewarded as conspicuously as 
might be. Sometimes they earn as much as one 
hundred per cent on the investment of their two 
talents in the same length of time that their 
superiors are earning no more than that with 
two and a half times as much capital; but, when 
the bonus is issued, the five-talent people always 
get it. Of course, that “bonus” is not so much 
a dividend as an assessment, for it represents the 
unused potentiality of the driven, and is, there- 
fore, more of a problem than a perquisite. But, 
whatever it is, it is passed out as a reward of 
merit, and the led do not get it. All we are con- 
cerned with now, however, is a fleeting glimpse 


112 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


of the led—a hard-working, well-meaning, mod- 
estly equipped, approximately honest, rela- 
tively decent group, who can be persuaded to 
do almost anything within their range of possi- 
bility. Sometimes they do very destructive 
things. It depends upon the character of their 
leadership. But that, too, is another story. It 
should be said in their behalf, however, that the 
led do not follow very long the leader who takes 
them into mischief, for the economic effects of 
such a course soon speak for themselves more 
loudly than the noisy call of any charlatan and 
more impressively than the flamboyant adver- 
tisement of any quack. 
Now there is a third group, which we are to 
be thinking of as the commissioned—a group 
so few in numbers, comparatively, that it hardly 
counts at all in the census or at the polls—a dis-, 
‘tinct genus composed of eager, kinetic, creative 
‘souls, who cannot be driven and cannot be led. 
very far or very long; whose hearts are reached | 
more often by challenge than persuasion; a 
group made up of persons who have become 
\ conscious of their appointment to a trusteeship, 
\in the estate of civilization. They are sensible 
of operating under higher orders than mere tem- 
poral government and local law. They are aware 
that everything they have and are and will to 
be is leased to them; held in trust; not goods to 
be possessed, but an estate to be administered, 
These are the commissioned. 


“WHOMSOEVER MUCH IS GIVEN” 113 


II 


In a former chapter we were thinking of the 
triumphant climax of his life who went willingly 
to the cross, convinced that his kingdom would 
henceforth be a lifting, drawing, driving energy. 
Outward appearances were against the ultimate 
success of his cause that day; but he knew that 
he had finished his work, that he had set in 
motion certain forces which would continue, 
self-restoratively, to work until the end of time! 

But all this faith of Jesus was predicated upon 
his firm belief that he could depend upon a few 
chosen people in every generation, who could 
and would become custodians of that power. 
They would be specially favored people—not 
necessarily rich in material property, though 
rags would be no recommendation nor thriftless- 
ness a credential to this office; not necessarily 
rich in erudition, though any inexcusable ig- 
norance would immediately disbar; not many 
mighty, in their own esteem or the public’s ac- 
claim, would be called; not the born-to-it by the 
will of flesh and blood, but by the irresistible 
urge of the spirit. 

Neither would the mere capacity to serve as 
a trustee of civilization commission a man un- 
less he were fully willing; and no mere willing- 
ness would suffice unless he were also able. On 
the day that Jesus was crucified, he could not 


114 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


number many who were properly equipped to 
serve in this capacity; but there were some. 
There were enough. One would have been 
enough. He knew of eleven. By the time they 
were ready to meet in formal conference, to plan 
for the furtherance of the cause, there were one 
hundred and twenty. 

One of the most important features of Jesus’ 
ministry was to make a test of men’s ability to 
serve as trustees of the estate he was presently 
to leave in the hands of a little potential mi- 
nority. In most cases they failed in their exam- 
ination. We have already seen the testing of 
the rich young ruler. It may be remarked in 
passing that there are very good reasons for be- 
lieving that this young nobleman was no other 
than Joseph of Arimathzea. We do not pause 
to cite these reasons. Whoever is interested in 
attempting to verify this claim can easily find 
access to the data on the point. 

If it may be assumed that this identification 
of the rich young ruler is correct, Joseph of 
Arimathza had a chance that day to go on rec- 
ord with a decision which would have made his 
fame deathless; but he was unable. 

Pilate had a chance to go down in history 
alongside Paul. There was one little moment, 
on the strategic forenoon when that burly Ro- 
man was serving in the joint capacity of judge 
and attorney for the defense, in the case of The 
People vs. Jesus of Nazareth, when he had an 


“WHOMSOEVER MUCH IS GIVEN” 11s 


opportunity to hand his story over to the poets 
and painters for all time. There was a moment 
when a certain decision might have made Pon- 
tius Pilate the kind of a name that is written 
only with a mallet and chisel. But Pilate was 
unable! 

Nicodemus ben Gorion, eminent lawyer, had 
a chance to give himself a choice immortality by 
conceding the supremacy of the reign of love 
over the reign of law; but was unable! 

True, when it was all done and a strange con- 
straint had fallen upon that city, and the clam- 
orous crowd had dissolved into little groups of 
nervous men, Joseph lends his new tomb, which 
he had built to provide his body with a mockery 
of the perpetuity he had been unable to secure 
for his soul; and Nicodemus acts as a _pall- 
bearer; and Pilate, urged to change the placard 
on the cross—the irony of which was belatedly 
considered too subtle for the crowd—to “He 
said he was the king,’ waved them all away 
with impatience, shouting: “‘I have written ‘He 
was a king.’ It is enough! Let be! He was a 
king !” 

Ah, yes; but however regretfully these men 
of apparently large capacity, judged by their 
official positions, their sagacity in business, and 
the extent of their material holdings—however 
regretfully they contemplated the tragedy of 
one who held life cheaper than duty, when it 
had come to the actual test of their ability to 


116 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


rise to their full stature, at the moment of his 
greatest need, they were unable. 

So the immediate responsibility for the de- 
velopment of the great ideal was bequeathed to 
a little group of unlettered fishermen and small 
farmers. But into their hands the founder will- 
ingly committed this trust, involving a valor 
priced at martyrdom; which makes us wonder 
what manner of spiritual meat they had fed 
upon to empower these lowly men with such 
audacious courage. 

The problem clears somewhat as we take 
reckoning of the fundamental difference be- 
tween the teaching that Jesus offered to the 
vast majority and the intensive character of his 
talks with these future trustees. It has already 
been hinted in a previous chapter that such dis- 
tinction was to be observed, and to this matter 
we now direct our attention. We will not en- 
deavor to call the roll of all the parables, distin- 
guishing between the type of admonition pre- 
sented to the multitude and the more exacting 
counsel to the disciples; but a few examples will 
suffice to make this distinction clear. Whoever 
finds this a fruitful study may continue the in- 
vestigation with profit and increasing conviction 
that our thesis is correct. 


“WHOMSOEVER MUCH IS GIVEN” 117 


IIT 


The parable of the Good Samaritan was spo- 
ken before a general audience of all sorts. A 
man did not have to be conscious of a trustee- 
ship in civilization to understand a simple act 
of neighborliness, even if that service involved 
some risk of personal safety. The crowd could 
and did see the point of it. : 

It was before a throng so large that they ac- 
tually trod upon one another that Jesus told the 
story of the man who had stacked up enough 
provisions to last him here forever; who, having 
announced to his soul that he could now take 
his ease, was hurriedly ushered out into the 
dark, alone and naked and afraid, with empty 
hands. 

All the publicans and sinners were out on 
the day that Jesus delivered the parable of the 
Prodigal Son. Here was something they could 
understand. That was a very interesting day in 
the ministry of the Master. Not only were the 
publicans and sinners well represented, but the 
scribes and Pharisees were there also, in large 
‘numbers—the latter passing much unfavorable 
comment on the fact that so many disreputables 
seemed to find the young prophet congen:al and 
his words comforting. This led Jesus to dis- 
course upon the general principles of reclama- 
tion. 


118 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


A man had lost one of his hundred sheep, and 
had sought it until he found it. A woman had 
lost one of the ten little silver medals off her 
wedding-bracelet, and had hunted for it until 
she found it. A father had lost his boy, and had 
waited, patiently and hopefully, until he re- 
turned. And when he returned, the boy’s elder 
brother, righteous, frugal, conservative, and 
self-admittedly perfect, staged an embarrassing 
scene for the household because the tattered 
tourist had been decently received. They knew 
—these Pharisees—what he meant and whose 
case was being treated. 

That must have been a great afternoon for the 
disciples. The lost had been admonished to 
come back, while they were still able to travel; 
and the disciples were not lost. The Pharisees 
had been vigorously excoriated for their ungen- 
erous self-righteousness, and the disciples were 
not Pharisees. It is easy to imagine Peter say- 
ing to John, as the crowd breaks up, that of all 
the sermons he had ever heard Jesus preach, 
this was the best one! 

When they were all gone away, Jesus drew 
his little group of disciples about him and deliv- 
ered a parable intended wholly and solely for 
them, and for those who in the future would 
accept commissions as trustees of civilization’s 
estate. 

This is not to be a simple story of neighborli- 
ness. This will not be anything like the tale of 


“WHOMSOEVER MUCH IS GIVEN” 119 


the selfish rich man, surrounded by crowded 
barns, adapting Omar’s philosophy to his corn- 
fed soul. Neither is this the same sort of a 
parable as the tale of the Sower, who went 
forth scattering seed almost anywhere—on the 
ploughed ground, in the fence-corners, over the 
highway, in the brambles—hoping it would 
grow and never coming back to see if it did. 
This will not be that kind of a story. 

This parable is meant for the minority—the 
trustees—the people who are expected to keep 
aglow the perpetual light; men and women who 
_own nothing, but have had large holdings leased 
to them. You are now to hear that story, and 
if you are of the potential minority to whom 
much has been given and of whom much shall 
be required, but have grown weary of your obli- 
gation or have lost interest in your commission, 
I promise 1t will bring the sweat out on you! 

A certain absentee landlord had entrusted the 
local operation of his estate to an agent. Upon 
his return from an extended trip it was reported 
to this capitalist that his agent was crooked. 
Said the rumor: “Your steward is wasting your 
goods.” 

So he called the steward in and said to him: 
“What is this that I hear about you? Prepare 
me a statement of all the transactions you have 
made in my name; and then you may consider 
yourself discharged !”’ 

The steward was in sore straits. His vas not 


120 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


the kind of a position from which one might step 
easily into another place of equal importance, 
especially without a certified character. It was 
not a mere job, from which, having been dis- 
charged, a man might present his time-ticket at 
the cashier’s window, take his $17.30, and fare 
forth in quest of another job of similar insig- 
nificance. His position was that of a trusted 
steward. He could not be a steward at all, un- 
less he could be trusted; and he could not be 
trusted. Said he desperately to himself: ““What 
shall I do? I cannot dig, and | am ashamed to 
beg!” So this was what he did. He called in all 
the debtors to the estate one by one, and made 
them participes criminis with him in his defalca- 
tion, incidentally placing them under a certain 
guilty obligation to himself. Later they must 
befriend him, or he will expose them! 

To the first debtor who appeared on sum- 
mons he inquired: “‘How much do you owe our 
lord ?” 

‘A thousand gallons of oil,”’ replied the man. 

“We will call that five hundred,” whispered 
the steward, with a significant smile. Another 
debtor arrived. , 

““How much do you owe our lord?” queried 
the retiring steward. 

‘Fifteen hundred bushels of wheat,” the man 
answered. 

“You may discount the bill twenty per cent !” 

Presently the capitalist heard of these trans- 


“WHOMSOEVER MUCH IS GIVEN” 121 


actions also, called his defaulting steward in, 
and, having informed him that he knew all 
about it, remarked quietly: “‘You have done 
very well! You have acted wisely !” 

One hears people saying that of all the subtle 
parables this one is the most difficult to under- 
stand. But it is easy enough when it falls into 
the hands of the people for whom it was intend- 
ed. When any one of the innumerable “‘debt- 
ors” to the estate, who have no consciousness 
of responsibility for the administration of its 
affairs, reads this parable, it startles him. He 
thinks there has been a misprint in the text. 
He wonders if—somewhere along the long line 
of tradition—there has not been an incorrect 
translation. Here, he says, a steward has proved 
himself a defaulter; and, on the eve of handing 
over his keys, he makes a host of other people 
accomplices in his felony; and the owner of the 
estate remarks, when he hears of it: “You have 
done very well. You have acted wisely.” There 
must be something the matter with this story, 
comments the common debtor. 

No; there is nothing the matter with this 
story! The commissioned trustee knows what 
it means! Between the lines and flaring from 
these quiet words, he sees the blistering irony of 
an indictment that fairly sears his soul! No 
loudly shouted rebuke, no frenzied denunciation 
could ever bring him up to a gasping standstill, 
pale and terrified, as do these calm, judicial 


122 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


words: ‘You have done well. You have acted 
wisely.”’ You have lost your position as a stew- 
ard, and you cannot be anything else than a 
steward; so all that is left for you is to get what 
you can, while you can, where you can, and 
however you can—for what you are getting now 
is all there will be for you—ever! 

The common debtor can come back, in a re- 
pentant mood, and say: “Here is the rest of that 
wheat. I am sorry!” Or: ‘‘Here is the balance 
of that oil, and please forgive me!”” But when 
the commissioned, who had been honored with 
a trusteeship, who had tasted of the heavenly 
gift, who had been given custody over a sacred 
trust which must be conveyed from one genera- 
tion to the next—a trust far too important to be 
left without absolute insurance—when he, the 
commissioned, loses his position, he is all 
through ! 

“You have done well,” said the Certain Rich 
Man. “You have lost the only place in the 
world that you were intended to occupy. Only 
a few hours remain for you on these premises. 
You would better get what you can—quickly! 
Fill your pockets! Take the cash and let the 
credit go!” 

Doubtless, on the occasion of the ultimate 
calling of the loan, many a member of the com- 
missioned minority will be asked some difficult 
questions. 

“‘Here is one item of goods which we have 


“WHOMSOEVER MUCH IS GIVEN” 123 


bf 


marked as charged out to you,” says the Cer- 
tain Rich Man, ‘‘on which we have had no re- 
port. Perhaps you will recall the incident. A 
bright, promising young fellow was pointed out 
to you; just graduated from college, he was 
without a nickel. Nobody in all his family con- 
nection able to lend him a dollar. He had taken 
his pre-medical course, hoping to become a phy- 
sician. You knew he could not work his way 
through a professional school, as he had done 
in college. You had a chance to help him to his 
training, by investing in him a loan of a very 
small part of the property that had been leased 
to you for just such business. 

“‘Had you done it, you would still be in the 
world and at work through him, probably ac- 
complishing more than you ever achieved by 
direct action while you were there. Every time 
he restored a broken unit of humanity and put 
it back into constructive service, that would 
have been you—you, dead, yet speaking! That 
opportunity was leased to you, along with the 
capacity for accepting it. You let the chance go 
by. The youth was forced back into the ranks 
to work with borrowed tools he was never meant 
to use. You had his tools! You were the trustee 
of his tools—holding them in trust for him! 
They were my goods! You wasted my goods! 

““And here is another item charged out to 
you. There was a certain man in your employ, 
you remember, who one day made a serious mis- 


124 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


take that caused you much annoyance and some 
financial loss. In the heat of your irritation you 
turned him out without a recommendation or a 
chance to square himself. You never inquired 
what became of him, did you? Well, you had 
an opportunity that day to re-create a soul; not 
merely to put it back where it was, but to make 
it all over—stronger, finer ! 

“Curiously enough, the very blunder he com- 
mitted furnished the machinery of your chance 
to rebuild him on a larger scale. Up to that 
hour you had not known each other very well. 
You were his chief. He was your subordinate. 
You gave orders. He carried them out. But 
he was only a common debtor to civilization and 
you were a steward. How greatly he was influ- 
enced by your personality you never knew. But 
that influence was an item of leased property. 
It was goods. 

“He blundered. You threw him out. You 
had a chance to make him over into something 
fine, and you shoved him down to defeat, cyni- 
cism, and despair. That opportunity to set him 
going toward a higher goal than he ever could 
have reached but for that experience was goods ! 
It was real goods—as real as a bank, or a mine, 
or a mill! It was my goods! You wasted my 
goods!” 

And what does all this mean, in the parable, 
about the steward discounting bills during the 
last hours of his tenure of office? Perfectly sim- 
ple, again, when read by the commissioned. 


“WHOMSOEVER MUCH IS GIVEN” 125 


When a man has been a trustee and, through 
failure to keep the faith, has lost his position, 
it always annoys him to see other people dis- 
charging their obligations to society. He begins 
to discount men’s bills, owed to their common 
employer, and payable to civilization in the coin 
of altruistic service. He finds himself saying to 
his neighbor: “‘What’s that? You mean to say 
that you are paying the salary of a doctor in 
China—all by yourself? Why, surely, that is 
more than your share!” 

To another he remarks: “I think you are 
doing yourself an injustice, carrying that sick 
man’s expenses. He was only in your employ 
fora month. You are under no legal obligation. 
You’ve paid more than enough on that al- 
ready !” 

Again we hear him saying: ‘‘ You certainly are 
allowing yourself to be imposed upon. Last year 
you were giving two nights a week to the Boy 
Scouts, and here I see in the paper that you have 
just been elected to an exacting office on the 
directorate of the Y. M.C. A. You would do 
.better to give yourself a little more leisure for 
recreation !”’ 

This is the very worst feature of the retiring 
steward. He is not content with flunking it, 
himself. He wants all the debtors sharing his 
delinquency. He thinks it will help to bridge the 
gap between his morality and theirs. Having 
failed to fulfil his trust, he falls back upon the 
whimper that too much had been expected of 


126 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


him; that too much was expected of everybody; 
that the Certain Rich Man is too exacting. 

That manner of talk is always to be expected 
from certain quarters. The one-talent man can 
be depended upon to arrive, on the day of ac- 
counting, dragging his spade sullenly, and hand- 
ing over his unused responsibility with a whine 
that his employer was a hard man; but one has 
a right to hope for better things eis a high- 
powered steward ! 

At length the rascally steward is called to 
task, but not noisily. We suspect we are to hear 
about an arrest, a trial, much sensational testi- 
mony, a conviction, and a long sentence. But of 
all this—nothing. “You have acted wisely,” de- 
clares the Certain Rich Man. For when a man 
has lost the only place he is destined to hold, 
he may be pardoned for picking up all the little 
trinkets he can find—and loading his pockets— 
and making fiiends guiltily with his inferiors, 
seeing there is no place for a deposed steward 
to go! 

This was the manner of spiritual diet that 
made Jesus’ disciples ready to go to Rome, and 
become “‘a spectacle unto the universe” through 
the recklessness with which they tossed their 
lives away for the sake of his cause. And this 
counsel is still offered to those who are conscious 
of their commission as trustees of civilization— 
stewards of the spiritual estate.” 


CHAPTER VI 
“SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM” 
L S has been observed, Jesus of Nazareth did 


not narrowly and fanatically restrict life’s 

activities to a mystical contemplation of 
metaphysical matters. So intimately associated 
was he with the joyousness of his friends that a 
wedding feast became the happier because he 
was a guest. And when he would not accept an 
invitation which did not also include his humble 
fishermen friends, they were invited, too. 

Indeed, there was so little of desire for monas- 
tic seclusion in the programme of the Man of 
Galilee that the priests charged him with being 
a glutton and a wine-bibber. This was a stock 
phrase which the ascetic customarily applied to 
any one of gregarious disposition. Had it car- 
ried a more personal indictment than that, Jesus 
would doubtless have resented and refuted it, as 
he might easily have done in all truth. 

We have seen his interest in men’s vocational 
concerns, his counsel relative to the industry 
and loyalty of the employee, and his hope that 
every man would so invest his capacities that 
he could be happy and effective in whatever 
work he had chosen to do. 

But all these things—vocations, avocations, 

127 


128 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


recreations—important as they were to a well- 
rounded life, must give precedence to a certain 
quest which he denominated “‘the search for the 
kingdom of God.” 

There was nothing new about this pursuit. It 
had been going on all through the ages. Jesus’ 
concern about it focussed upon the point of mak- 
ing it a more practical endeavor. Humanity had 
always clamored for larger information relative 
to the affairs of the spirit. Instinctively it un- 
derstood that there were undiscovered secrets 
in the grip of Deity, and longed to know them. 
Early Hebraic lore pictures a Jehovah on guard 
against the impertinence of the inquiring human 
mind. The angel, defending with a flaming 
sword the gate of Eden, lest the expatriated 
Adam might return and eat of the tree of death- 
lessness, indicates the thought of those ancient 
seers in respect to mankind’s ambition to pos- 
sess larger spiritual power. Not much later 
Jehovah is represented as descending, upon the 
Plains of Shinar, to confuse the plans of men 
who hoped to invade his throne by way of brick 
and mortar. In the patriarchal days Jacob is 
reported as having wrestled with an angel; and 
when, crippled painfully, he appeared to have 
lost his battle, Jacob held tightly to his celestial 
antagonist, shouting: ‘‘Except thou bless me, I 
will not let thee go!” 

Nothing is clearer, throughout the spiritual 
pilgrimage of the people who provided the racial 


“SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM” 129 


background of the men with whom Jesus walked 
and talked, than the fact of that unremitting 
search for heavenly light. If one may be privi- 
leged to read between the lines of that engaging 
story inseparably associated with the Nativity 
—the arrival of the wise men from the East— 
one views that caravan as having come down 
through the ages, gropingly at first, then more 
confidently and with more certain light, accu- 
mulating the riches of an increasingly precious 
spiritual experience, until it drew up before the 
humble stable-door, in little Bethlehem, and de- 
posited its treasure at the feet of him who was 
to take them up, transfigure them, and bequeath 
them to the world. 

No; there was nothing new about the quest 
that Jesus urged. His contribution to it was 
vested in his hope to make it more attractive 
and attainable for the average man. It had been 
in the keep of prophets and priests. There had 
come to be too many commissioners, middle- 
men, and interpreters blocking the way between 
the layman and God. The woman at Jacob’s 
well had stated the case quite nicely, as it 
appeared to the lay mind. The Jews had God 
localized to the temple in Jerusalem; the Sa- 
maritans had Him limited to a sacred grove on 
a certain hilltop. Jesus remarked that the time 
would come—if, indeed, it had not come already 
—when men, realizing that God is a spirit, 
would not be content with seeking Him in any 


130 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


humanly manufactured trysting place, however 
venerable. Once, passing the temple, a disciple 
commented upon the beauty of its masonry, and 
Jesus, although well aware of the architectural 
grandeur of that edifice, remarked that these 
stones would presently be levelled. 

Persons disposed to consider this statement 
as a prediction of the temple’s actual physical 
destruction, which occurred not many years af- 
terward, have fair ground for their belief; but 
may one not suspect there was a deeper mean- 
ing than this in Jesus’ words? For he hoped and 
believed that the days of building high and thick 
and beautiful walls around God would soon 
be over. Jesus was interested in corporate wor- 
ship. He approved the synagogue, attended it, 
preached in it. He loved the temple and held it 
in reverence. But, somehow, the spirit of God 
must be released and made more readily accessi- 
ble to the individual mind. 

If men were to understand this important 
fact, they must be made aware of the real nature 
of ‘the kingdom of God.” To the conventional 
Hebrew it was something that had been. The 
temple stood for it. The temple was filled with 
the relics and memorabilia of a triumphant past 
in which Jehovah had wrought many wonders 
for a favored race. ‘‘Lo, there is the kingdom!” 
declaimed the type that sought history for his 
spiritual satisfaction. New cults, led by ambi- 
tious reformers, struggled for a hearing, their 


“SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM” 131 


advocates shouting: “‘Lo, here is the kingdom!” 
But, according to Jesus, this “kingdom” was 
neither something that had come to pass and 
gone to crystal, nor something that was to be 
seen in the offing as a general cure-all of their 
social, moral, and political problems. ‘‘The 
kingdom of God is within you!” said he. That 
was new! The quest for the kingdom was old. 
Men had always been at it. But nobody had 
ever said before that the kingdom was so easily’ 
found that the individual did not have to look 
outside his own soul for it. The kingdom is 
either now and here, or it is nowhere and never! 

There are many parables in which Jesus tried 
to make clear the various facts about this king- 
dom. It will be interesting to view closely a 
small group of them which deal with the impor- 
tance of making this quest of the kingdom the 
supreme passion of life. However eager a man 
might be to succeed and be happy, in his pur- 
suit of “the things” which made existence pleas- 
ant, his search for the kingdom would insure his 
possessing whatever he required to enrich and 
ennoble his life. Too much was being made of 
the trivialities—food, clothing, houses, rugs, 
jewels. Thieves menaced the jewels, moth men- 
aced the rugs, rust devoured the precious orna- 
ments of metal; and as for clothing—well, the 
lilies of the field, unconcerned about spinning, 
were better dressed than Solomon (who still 
symbolized the last word in matters sartorial). 


132 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


People were giving themselves over to a lifelong 
scramble for things that had no essential val- 
ues, whereas, if they only knew it, they might 
possess an abiding joy, which no man could 
ever take away. How ardently Jesus wished 
that he might communicate his belief to his 
friends! How ingeniously he wrought the pic- 
tures through which he attempted to show them 
the ineffable beauty of this “‘kingdom.” 


I] 


Nobody may have the story of the pearl- 
trader at the price of a single reading. It is not 
quite so simple as that. Because it is so ex- 
tremely brief, one suspects that it is easily un- 
derstood. This is a mistake. Its brevity should 
only serve as a warning that it requires more 
study than it might if it were replete with inci- 
dent. Simply stated, there was a pearl-mer- 
chant. He dealt only in fine pearls. Whenever 
he heard of a particularly valuable pearl, he 
went to see it. If it suited him, he added it to 
his collection. This was no mere passing fad 
with this man. It was his business! He traded 
in pearls. One of the most important tasks of 
the pearl-trader, then and now, is in matching 
them. He made up strands. He would exchange 
with other men of his profession, to their mutual 
advantage. One day he heard of a very fine 
pearl, which was reported to be the most valua- 


“SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM” 133 


ble in existence. He went to see it, recognized 
its uniqueness, and resolved to buy it. He asked 
its price, and the owner told him he might have 
it in exchange for his entire stock of pearls! So, 
because he was a dealer in fine pearls, and had 
now found the finest pearl on earth, he emptied 
his jewel-cases of everything they contained and 
bought the pearl. It was only one; but it was 
the one! He now lost interest in collecting pearls. 
They all seemed quite futile and worthless. For 
he had found The Pearl of Great Price! 

It is to be suspected that many readers of this 
story may have missed the point of it. They 
have given most of their attention to the size 
and beauty and desirability of this wonderful 
pearl. All other pearls pale into insignificance 
in its presence. Nobody who had seen this pearl 
would ever afterward appreciate the beauty of 
any other pearl. Granted—all these thoughts; 
but that is not what this story is about. This 
was “the pearl of great price”! It is the “great 
price’ that constitutes the uniqueness of this 
jewel. Quite effectually does this parable dis- 
pose of the widely accepted slogan “Salvation is 
free!” Apparently Jesus did not hold it at that 
figure. 

An active imagination finds in this story an 
abundance of material for speculation. Before 
one begins thinking about this extraordinary 
pearl which the merchant eventually possessed, 
at such great cost, one wants to spend a little 


134. THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


time figuring on the nature of the pearls he 
already owned. He must have thought very 
highly of them. Indeed, he had to think very 
highly of them, or the matter of turning them 
all in, as the purchase price of this ultimate 
pearl, becomes an affair of no importance. 
What were they like—these other cherished 
pearls? Where had he found them? What had 
they cost him? | 

If we may be permitted to do some guessing, 
let us suppose that this merchant had found one 
of his most valuable pearls in Athens—head- 
quarters and rendezvous of philosophy. Perhaps 
he thought of it as his metaphysical pearl. Per- 
haps it symbolized the search for truth after the 
manner in which Athens quested it. We may 
suppose that during his stay in Athens this mer- 
chant had observed that some philosophers be- 
lieved one’s best course to pretend utter indif- 
ference to life; others had decided to get what 
pleasure they could out of it, seeing it was brief. 
Most of the thinkers had taken their pick of 
these programmes—either to stand, arms folded 
and lips pursed, contemptuously, watching the 
gay procession pass, hilariously intent upon su- 
perficial pleasures, or join the procession and 
affect gaiety. 

There were some, however, who, realizing the 
difficulties in the way of espousing and practis- 
ing either of these cults consistently, declared 
they did not know anything about the riddle of 


“SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM” 135 


life. They doubted if any one knew. The whole 
of it—the search for Deity, the search for reality, 
the search for truth, the search for the highest 
good—all was an unsolved and insoluble riddle. 
These people frankly proclaimed that they did 
not know. They called themselves agnostics. 
Perhaps our merchant was an agnostic. That 
was what his Athenian pearl meant to him— 
agnosticism. 

Now that would not be easy to give up. Once 
a man has proclaimed himself an agnostic, it is 
by no means a simple matter to disavow his 
empty creed. His God-questing neighbors are 
either horrified by his hazardous position, which 
serves to distinguish him as a person of remark- 
able courage and audacity—a réle at once flat- 
tering and dignifying—or regard him with the 
utmost solicitude, and attempt to rescue him 
from his perilous predicament—an implied trib- 
ute to the unusual value of his jeopardized soul. 

When a man has earned a reputation for ag- 
nosticism, he customarily becomes more vain- 
glorious over his distinction than he might be 
over the invention of a new labor-saving device 
or the discovery of a cure for some ancient dis- 
ease. Many a young student in college, misin- 
formed before he goes there, that all scientific 
men are agnostics, assumes that he is nothing 
less or else than that. Sometimes he begins to 
affect the agnostic mood immediately upon his 
purchase of the little green cap which denotes 


136 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


his membership in the Freshman Class. As soon 
as he has learned how to light a Bunsen burner 
in the laboratory he decides that the energy of 
the electron is sufficient to account for the uni- 
verse. Learning that the human race has regis- 
tered a slow progression through the ages, he 
assumes that all this advancement was wrought 
by a process of “blind necessity.”’ It is quite as 
reasonable to suppose that a pile of lumber and 
a load of brick might, by blind necessity, co- 
ordinate themselves into a nice little six-room 
bungalow’ 

But, having become an agnostic, the youth 
finds it increasingly difficult to detach himself 
from his theory. He likes the attention it draws 
to himself. He enjoys both the pity and the re- 
proach vouchsafed him at home when he airs 
his beliefs at Christmas holidays. There’s many 
an agnostic who would gladly relinquish his ab- 
surd position if he might do so at a smaller sacri- 
fice of his vanity. 

Perhaps the merchant in the parable pos- 
sessed a pearl like that. It was not easy to let it 
go. But—and surely this was a high tribute to 
his magnanimity of mind—when he had gazed 
upon the ultimate pearl and realized that to 
possess it he must let the Athenian jewel go, he 
was ready to meet the J-told-you-sos of his pious 
neighbors, some of whom had been much more 
careful of their metaphysics than their morality, 
and the we-knew-you-would-come-to-its of un- 


“SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM” 137 


tutored folk whose intellectual life was bounded 
by the local gossip of the community. He knew 
that he would automatically catalogue himself, 
in the opinion of his agnostic cronies, alongside 
the noisy enemies of mental enlightenment. 

If, then, we would really find out how valu- 
able was the ‘“‘Kingdom Pearl,” we must take 
reckoning of the value of those pearls which had 
to be given up! Perhaps one of the pearls had 
been found in Rome—where law and justice 
boasted of themselves. It may easily be believed 
that this pearl had become very important in the 
merchant’s esteem. He believed in law and jus- 
tice. It was not wise to encourage too much 
sentimentality in the ordering of human affairs. 
The Golden Rule, for example—there was a 
sentimental proposition, an impracticable mea- 
sure, finding no sanction in the ways of Nature. 
Charity was forever handing crutches to people 
who ought to be taught to walk. Compassion 
was enervating. Pity was ruinous. Sympathy 
only made for indigence, delinquency, and retro- 
gression on the part of those to whom such so- 
licitude was shown. He was for justice. Let 
every man keep the law. It would be hard to 
turn in a pearl like that, seeing how stoutly he 
had contended against any belief that made an 
appeal to the heart. 

Perhaps another of these cherished pearls had 
been picked up in Phcenicia—the great commer- 
cial centre. This stood for success, as men de- 


138 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


termined success, in terms of money and the 
things that money may procure. It was to be 
observed that men of large material possessions 
always spoke in a tone of higher authority 
than poor men. They were relieved of drudgery, 
and thus enabled to give more attention to 
the things that made life beautiful and enjoy- 
able. It was not easy to turn in the Phoenician 
pearl. | 

But when this merchant saw the unearthly 
sheen of the most wonderful pearl in all the 
world, he gave up all. He had taken much pride 
in his former possessions, but this pearl was 
worth the entire stock ! 

Some one, dreaming over this parable, may 
have a moment of wondering why Jesus chose 
the pearl as the jewel of this story. At a super- 
ficial glance one might decide that the Master 
mentions the pearl here in exactly the same 
manner with which he could as easily have em- 
ployed the diamond or the ruby. He wanted to 
speak of a jewel, and arbitrarily chose the pearl 
for no better reason than he might have chosen 
the emerald. 

Second thought decides that this is incorrect. 
He could not have used the diamond, for the 
diamond achieves its value in the cutting. The 
Kingdom is all in one piece. Cut it and you lose 
it! Neither could he speak, in this connection, 
of the ruby or the emerald, for reasons presently 
shown. Of course, these other gems taught their 


“SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM” 139 


separate lessons, but they were not true exam- 
ples of the Kingdom. 

In the ancient tombs along the Nile, Egyptol- 
ogists find emeralds of great value and in large 
quantities, verifying the old tradition that such 
gems were significant of immortality and pos- 
sessed of magical powers to lengthen the life- 
term. The amethyst was confidently believed 
to preserve the wearer from evil desires. Even 
so late as the fifteenth century amethysts were 
worn for this purpose, and wrought many an 
undoubtable work of grace for their owners. It 
is better not to scoff at this. Who shall say that 
the high-minded young man, who had sacrificed 
many a pleasure to purchase an amethyst, to 
insure himself against evil thoughts, failed to be 
helped thereby? ‘True; it might not have done 
him much good if he had been given the ame- 
thyst by his anxious parents. But if it had cost 
him something of value and if he had bought it 
for the express purpose of insuring his moral in- 
tegrity, whoever doubts its real value as a safe- 
guard against evil only announces his ignorance 
of psychology. 

Jesus doubtless knew all these stories about 
emeralds and amethysts; and if he is simply 
searching for a precious stone to introduce into 
his story, what would better serve his purpose 
than these? Or the ruby, of which Solomon had 
said that only wisdom was more precious? But 
the Kingdom was like unto a pearl. 


140 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


It is interesting to note that the glory of the 
pearl is not intrinsic. Its sheen is invested in it 
by the beholding eye. The ruby and emerald 
possess intrinsic values, by virtue of their pecu- 
liar stain. The value of the pearl resides in its 
iridescence, and this iridescence is an optical 
phenomenon, due to interference with rays of 
light refracted from microscopically small cor- 
rugations of the surface. Whatever iridescent 
sheen glows on the pearl is there because the in- 
dividual sees it there! In sober truth, the glory 
of the pearl is not in the pearl at all! It is but 
light, strangely stratiated and refracted upon 
the beholder’s lens. In and of itself, the pearl 
can do nothing for the individual except to serve 
as a vehicle for the refraction of light. 

Possibly this may be made more clear by 
another figure: Suppose a man buys member- 
ship in a gymnasium class—twenty-five lessons 
for twenty-five dollars. This will renew his vi- 
tality. What will renew his vitality—the tick- 
ets? No; he might frame the tickets in gold and 
wear them about his neck and sleep with them 
under his pillow; but they will never benefit 
him in the least, until he goes and takes that 
exercise ! 

The Kingdom of Heaven is like the pearl. It 
has just as much irradiating value as the indi- 
vidual puts into it through the capacity of his 
own sight. If he happens to be astigmatized, 
so that the angles of incidence in his retina are 


“SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM” 141 


out of harmony, he can see the beauty of the 
emerald or the ruby, whose dominant attribute 
is color; or the diamond, whose function is sim- 
ple reflection; but he can never hope to realize 
the glory of the pearl, because that is a matter 
of extremely exacting refraction. 

If it be thought that we are attributing to 
Jesus certain knowledge of otology to which he 
had no access in his generation, it will be well 
for us to remember the frequent use he made 
of the optical conditions under which men see 
clearly. “The organ of light in the body,” said 
Jesus, ‘‘is the eye. If, therefore, the light that 
is in thee be darkness, how great is that dark- 
ness!” Again we find him saying: “If thine eye 
be single” (by which he meant capable of nor- 
mal reactions) “thy whole body shall be full of 
light. If thine eye be impaired, thy body shall 
be full of distorted images.” Being able to see 
the Kingdom—that was the point! It requires 
a trained eye, unimpaired by too much steady 
concentration upon the gaudy effects and garish 
phenomena of a world pledged to interest in 
transient form and color; unwarped by deep- 
‘seated prejudices that forbid one’s bringing the 
Kingdom into ocular focus! The Kingdom 1s a 
pearl of great beauty, provided one has eyes to 
see it. 

In the light of these facts, we begin to under- 
stand the inner meaning of this parable of the 
pearl. Further contemplation of this illustration 


142 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


repays one for the effort. There is a sense, for 
example, in which the pearl is a distinct product 
of pain. Some irritating energy comes into the 
experience of the mollusk, and the victim se- 
cretes a peculiar fluid which envelops the thing 
that otherwise would have destroyed its life. 
Pearl-divers do not look for large, fine-looking 
shells. They search for the regularly shaped 
mollusks that seem to have been undergoing 
serious vicissitudes. It is under such circum- 
stances that pearls grow. Doubtless it could be 
shown that at the heart of every worth-while 
blessing in the world there is a primary motiva- 
tion of suffering... It is not inconsistent that 
Jesus’ Kingdom should have built itself upon a 
tragedy—the greatest of all tragedies—and thus 
have likened itself unto a pearl—the pearl of 
great price. 


ITI 


In the parable of the hidden treasure, which, 
because of its extreme brevity in close associa- 
tion with other more extended parables, has 
lacked the full attention it so richly deserves, 
Jesus seizes upon a tremendously appealing 
theme as an effective vehicle for conveying in- 
formation concerning the Kingdom. 

“Hidden treasure!” What a phrase to con- 
jure with! Confide these words to whomsoever 
you will—sage or savage, sinner or Saint, gray- 
beard or schoolboy—and instantly you have 


“SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM” 143 


his attention. Doubtless it is the hope of discov- 

ery that constitutes the main eagerness of life. 

No man need ever think himself old so long as 

he is stirred to quick interest by a hint of some- 

thing to be disclosed. It is this quest of things, 

hidden that keeps us keyed up to concert pitch, 
as we endeavor to play our part in thesymphony | 
of life; and whenever existence has become flat | 
and stale—as it does, undeniably, for many peo-| 
ple—perhaps this means only that they have 
lost the joy of discovery, either because they 
have been uniformly disappointed in their quests | 
or have quite too easily found everything their | 
tastes required. 

Of course, there is room here for some very 
proper moralizing about the unsuccessfulness of 
persons who have sought treasures where no 
treasure ever was, in which pursuit they blindly 
pass by rich deposits of wealth, theirs for the 
asking and taking. There is room also for some 
reflection upon the curious course of those who, 
mistaking the glitter and phosphorescence of 
common, worthless stuff for real negotiable 
wealth, have spent their lives hoarding treasures 
which had no actual power to purchase any en- 
during joy in this world—and assuredly none in 
a world to come. Room, too, for some sober 
thinking about the people who, having found 
treasure, fail of declaring their ownership of it, 
because of their unwillingness to accept the re- 
sponsibilities incident to its possession. 


144 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


In our present study we reluctantly turn from 
the temptation to meditate upon the general 
principles of “‘discoveries” —the discoveries men 
have made of energies and riches whereby our 
race has been advanced to its present state of 
civilization. All the secrets of life are in the 
grip of God. He releases them very slowly; not 
that He is grudging of them, but apparently He 
feels that humanity is not ready to claim or 
safely use certain energies until the human mind 
has begun to sense the need of such additional 
aid. He can afford to wait until the time is ripe 
for the release of secrets whereby the eye and 
ear of man become acute to sights and sounds 
hitherto without significance. 

The same kind of steam that issued from the 
kettle swung over Abraham’s camp-fire eventu- 
ally became subject to discipline in an engine. 
The lightning that flashed on Sinai, about the 
fearless feet of the great emancipator, was pre- 
cisely the same energy, in essence and power, as 
the electricity which has been trained to perform 
so large a part of the world’s work. There were 
many intervening chapters to these stories of 
the subjection of steam and electricity to do 
man’s bidding. One Hero, of Alexandria, in the 
first century, built a turbine engine, which the 
priests condemned as “a devil’s toy.” They 
told Hero he was a fool (which he was for paying 
any attention to them) and ordered the engine 
to the scrap-heap. In the sixteenth century 


“SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM” 145 


Della Porta made an engine, but nobody could 
think of any use for it. A century later Savery 
made another engine, with about the same re- 
sult. The secret was still safe. As the race grad- 
ually shed its superstitions and made ever more 
daring ventures with the untried, occasionally 
some picked man would catch elusive glimpses 
of this potential energy. At length a modern 
seer laid hold on it, bound it, and commanded 
it, henceforth and forever, to be man’s servant. 
But it was a long, slow process. The Infinite in- 
tended the race to have it, but was content to 
wait until humanity could safely use this power. 

These enriching discoveries were made mostly 
by accident. Men do not resolve to discover 
something. They develop and apply new ener- 
gies, not that they may discover but because 
they have discovered. And yet there is a sense 
in which the disclosure of fresh facts is never 
accidental, but rather in accordance with an 
Infinite design. Always, when the time had 
arrived for the release of a great secret, some 
chosen man was stopped in his journey and 
urged to investigate a situation brimming with 
mystery. Somehow he is lured into the nimbus 
of inextinguishable fire flaring from a burning 
bush in some lonely and obscure Midian, or col- 
lides with the dazzling glare of a strange light 
on the road to some Damascus where he has an 
errand, promptly forgotten as the greater fact 
drives it into eclipse. Sometimes the potential 


146 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


discoverer seems propelled by a strategy oper- 
ated from “‘off-stage’’—apparently caught in an 
invisible net of circumstances from which he 1s 
unable to extricate himself until he has seen his 
vision. 

Whoever doubts that God would concern His 
majestic mind with the ordering of such minute 
details, in the disclosure of a secret to human- 
ity, needs to be reminded that an elaborate 
strategy is executed even in the humble world 
of bees and flowers, wherein the latter, by their 
perfume and honey, invite the former to become 
messengers bearing pollen to neighboring plants 
of the same species. 

Men have always been stumbling upon hid- 
den treasure, seemingly by accident. The an- 
cient astrologers sought only omens from the 
stars; but while so engaged made the charts upon 
which modern astronomers so heavily rely for 
data. Chemistry acknowledges its debt to the 
alchemists, who were mixing magical brews to 
prolong the lives of their royal masters, some 
of whom had lived quite too long. Columbus 
would not have ventured to cross the Atlantic 
if he had not been wrong in his figuring about 
the size of the earth. Ponce de Leon was led to 
Florida in quest of a mythical spring. Coronado 
ventured to the Kansas prairies in an attempt 
to find “the Seven Cities of Cibola.” 

Indeed, if it were not for the fact that many 
men, in chasing some will o’ the wisp, “‘acciden- 


“SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM” 147 


tally”’ sighted a fixed star, the world would still 
be lying in ignorance. Some secrets are so baf- 
flingly mysterious that it requires ages to dis- 
close them. Men of one age must be lured to an 
investigation by way of an appeal to their super- 
stitions. Another age must be invited to take 
an interest through an appeal to their love of 
adventure. At length the treasure is revealed in 
its true light. 

It should be remembered, however, that the 
discoverers must not only “happen” upon these 
secrets, but they must be sufficiently informed 
of the nature and value of their finds to make 
use of their unearthed treasure. Columbus dis- 
covers a continent, but Columbus was a naviga- 
tor by profession. Columbus did not discover 
radium. He was not a physicist. He could not 
have discovered new craters on the moon. He 
Was not an astronomer. He did not discover a 
new vaccine. He was not an histologist. 

The Kingdom is like unto a discovery—the 
discovery of hidden treasure in a field. This is 
a great story. We do not know what this man 
was seeking, or where he was going, or why. He 
must have been in a hurry, for he had forsaken 
the highway and was cutting across through the 
fields. If he was in a hurry, there must have 
been some important objective at the end of his 
intended route. Just what that important thing 
was, the achievement of which demanded his 
haste, we are not told. Something happened 


148 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


that made him forget what it was. Everything 
else in his category of hopes and ambitions faded 
out that day, leaving nothing but the bare fact 
that while crossing this field he had accidentally 
stumbled upon a treasure. 

He drew up with a start, opened the chest 
mystifiedly, and stood amazed at the possibili- 
ties which lay before him. No more old drudg- 
eries! No more going and coming at the beck 
and call of other men! New life, new freedom, 
leisure, travel, a home—his very own! If—if 
only! Ah, but there was a terrifying subjunctive 
in the way. 

Clearly it would be bad policy for him to go 
to the owner of that field and say: “‘Sir, I have 
found a chest of treasure, down here at the far 
corner of your farm, and should like very much 
to buy it. What will you take?” It is quite 
possible that the owner would find his own cu- 
riosity somewhat stirred. Perhaps he might be 
loath to part with this hidden treasure. No; 
the thing to do was to buy the whole field, which 
he did not want, at all; and thus establish own- 
ership of the treasure. Then he could carry it 
away at his leisure. 

So the man in the parable went to bargain 
for the field. It was not a desirable purchase at 
any price, except for the hidden treasure. Con- 
sidered as productive ground it may have been 
worthless. Perhaps he lived too far from the 
field to till it successfully, even if it had been 


“SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM” 149 


fertile. He inquired the price of the field. 
Doubtless the sight of this stranger, attempting 
to negotiate for a certain field belonging to this 
farm, may have aroused the interest of the 
owner. At all events, he named a price that 
sent the purchaser scurrying for money. Before 
he was done with this business it cost him every- 
thing he had in the world. But nothing mattered 
any more but that treasure! He converted all 
his property into money, and, having stripped 
himself clean to effect the purchase, bought the 
field and owned the treasure. Then he also 
owned the field, which he did not want. It is 
conceivable that his field became something of 
a liability. One wonders if he did not have to 
keep the weeds cut down, and repair the road 
that bound it, and mend the fences. 
Sometimes one covets an extraordinary gift 
in the holding of a friend and wishes that it 
might be one’s own possession—his poise, for 
example—his absolutely correct balance, that 
keeps him strong and untroubled in the midst of 
any and all circumstances. It would be a great 
thing, we think, to possess such firm anchorage, 
such perfect equilibrium. It would be like the 
discovery of precious treasure. Doubtless we 
may have it; but we may not just dig it up and 
make off with it, as we might pluck an apple 
from a tree along the roadside. If we are going 
to obtain this treasure, we will have to buy the 
held in which it lies. It is not a very pleasant 


150 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


field to deal with. Ownership of this enclosure 
where mental poise is to be found involves long, 
patient, consistent diligence in dealing, calmly 
and dispassionately, with every difficulty and 
condition of life as each arises, practising that 
science of life not only during the experience of 
heavy strains, laid on unexpectedly, but through 
the petty irritations of daily routine. 

There is something quite adventurous about 
bidding for the Kingdom to abide in one’s heart. 
It is an all-inclusive, all-absorbing, all-eclipsing 
sort of thing—this Kingdom. You cannot say: 
“‘T should like to have that joy, and experience 
that calmness, and live my life unafraid, and 
face the world with a smile and death without 
faltering; but I intend also to reserve my right 
to these lesser holdings—my greed (which I pre- 
fer to speak of as my business policy), my snob- 
bery (which sounds better when called “my so- 
cial caste”) and my heartless indifference (which 
I commonly think of as “minding my own 
affairs’’). 

No; you either take the Kingdom or leave it. 
It is not built in pieces or by the “‘unit system.” 
You cannot go through the Kingdom market 
and say to the salesman: “Slice me off about so 
much Genuine Satisfaction!” or “Weigh me 
out about twenty-four hours’ worth of Abiding 
Joy.” It is not to be had that way. Jesus said: 
‘‘No man can serve two masters.” He might 
wish to divide his interest—toying now with 


“SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM” I51 


forces that tear his life to bits, and again experi- 
menting a little with the Kingdom; but it is out 
of the question. It is at this point that many a 
discoverer, having happened upon treasure, can- 
not meet the terms of possession. He has seen 
some friend go through an experience loaded 
with pain, loss, disappointment, and near-ruin, 
with an inner light leading him on and an inner 
power holding him up; or perhaps he has found, 
in the radiance of another’s spirit-filled per- 
sonality, exactly the life he desires to live. He 
would be glad enough to have this treasure if 
he could shoulder it and walk away with it, but 
he cannot scrape up the price of the field. To 
buy that field he must let go of certain posses- 
sions he cannot relinquish. There are old friend- 
ships that hold him back, friendships with men 
who, by their cold cynicism, make it impossible 
for him to develop much enthusiasm over what 
they would surely call pure sentiment. Certain 
methods of business procedure, good enough 
until now, cannot continue, if he is to possess 
this newly discovered treasure; yet how can he 
alter his business tactics ? 

It is a great experience to have acquired a 
sense of the Kingdom in one’s soul. We come 
by it sometimes in unlikely places; perhaps in 
some uncouth, unlettered person where the trea- 
sure is hidden in a very unattractive held; we 
find it again in the task that is full of tiresome 
drudgery, in an event that is full of sorrow, 1n 


152 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


a circumstance that had all the marks of a ruin- 
ous catastrophe. But, whenever and wherever 
we find it, we dare not lightly pass it by, with 
our interest still held by the minor quest of the 
hour, saying: “I shall be back this way again 
sometime.” 

It may not be doubted that many highly po- 
tential lives, having registered nothing but dull 
mediocrity, for the few years allotted to them, 
might have been great had they stopped to bar- 
gain for the hidden treasure which they had 
found while en route to a minor destination. 
And it is equally true that many a life of meagre 
mould and small equipment, of which nothing 
had been predicated and little predicted, has 
been clothed with power and dignity because, 
one day, it had not only found treasure but 
stripped itself stark to possess that joy supreme. 


CHAPTER VII 
“WHY ARE YE FEARFUL?” 
| ‘ROM the lips of one whose name is always 


mentioned first in a roll-call of the valor- 

ous, an admonition concerning courage 
comes with good taste and high authority. It is 
not to be denied, however, that this Galilean 
brand of heroism has been difficult for the aver- 
age man to comprehend. 

Informed that self-preservation is the first law 
of nature, humanity has taken great pride in its 
ability to offer adequate defense against aggres- 
sion. And we cannot imagine that Jesus, to 
whom personal honor was precious, would as- 
sume an attitude of indifference toward the un- 
questionable valor with which men have risked 
their lives and shed their blood to protect inter- 
ests dear to themselves and their kindred. 

At this hour, with the bitterness of the world’s 
most cruel and costly war still as gall upon our 
tongues, it is natural that we should indulge 
ourselves in all the superlatives of contempt for 
armed combat; but it will not be becoming in us, 
even in the interest of strongly stating our de- 
sire for peace, that we should forget the courage 
of men who, from time to time, have fought to 
make our world safe to live in. 

Many ardent Christians have gone to war be- 

153 


1s4 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


lieving that they were engaged in a righteous 
cause. After the “tumult and the shouting” 
had died, and the “‘captains and the kings” had 
departed, there may have arisen some doubts 
about the righteousness of war—any war; but, 
while the issue was hot, it was easy for men to 
persuade one another that it was the only thing 
to do. 

It has not been so long since we, with all the 
experience of the world at our disposal in the 
pages of history, solemnly told our youth that 
we were sending them forth armed to save the 
world. And did some Christian idealist risk his 
professional standing, and brook the indignation 
of his neighbors, by hinting that war, in the role 
of redemption, had never proved to be much of 
a success; that war, as a friend of the weak, had 
previously borne a questionable reputation, he 
was at once an object of suspicion—possibly a 
coward. 

At the present moment, with no rumor of 
war to qualify the intensity of our declarations 
against militancy for any cause, we are apt to 
forget the fact that men have fought, and coun- 
selled other men to fight, sincerely believing it 
to be in accordance with Christ’s will. Now that 
I am convinced, in the face of the fact that we 
urged our sons and nephews to go out and fight 
for an idealistic principle, that the idealism pos- 
sible in any war is related to the horror of war 
about as nothing is related to everything, I am 


“WHY ARE YE FEARFUL?” 155 


still left under the obligation of having said to 
these young men that I believed that our en- 
trance into that war was necessary. 

I hear everywhere about that war is only 
murder. But as I remember the upturned faces 
of those young men in our cantonments, listen- 
ing to our impassioned words about losing one’s 
life for the sake of high principle, they did not 
look like murderers. I did not think then that 
they were murderers, and I do not think so now. 

I seem to recall a war that was waged in the 
last quarter of the eighteenth century in which 
certain of our forefathers revolted against the 
tyrannical impositions put upon them by a coun- 
try from whence they had fled in search of lib- 
erty; have even known people to boast that 
their great-great-grandsires had been in it. 
They fought for liberty, which is—after all’s 
said about murder—not a bad thing. I seem to 
recall also another war in the eighteen-sixties 
which freed the slaves and saved the Union. 
Whether my grandfather and my uncles and all 
the rest of our militant kin knew that they were 
murderers, I am not sure. They never talked 
about it in such terms. I gathered as a child 
that they thought they had done something in 
the interest of civilization. 

We are eager for a lasting peace; but, to 
achieve that peace, it will not be necessary for 
us to forget utterly that a very great many 
brave and good men have gone into battle and 


156 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


shed their blood, in faith believing that they 
were doing God’s bidding; and “greater love 
hath no man than this, that a man lay down his 
life for his friends.” 

Surely that much needs be said, as great 
conventions to-day resolve that they will never 
fight, no matter who calls, or when, or why. 
Let us have peace; but let us temper our con- 
tempt for men who fight and have fought, “‘lest 
we forget.”’ 

From time immemorial it has. been taught 
that self-preservation is the first law of nature. 
Let us concede that point and discuss it. Who- 
ever wishes to live by the laws of nature should 
and must bear this fact in mind. An altruistic 
tiger, resolving to renounce the code of the jun- 
gle, would leave no heirs to perpetuate his ideal- 
ism. And any man who proposes to live under 
the laws governing physical life in the forest, 
field, and stream, would find the gospel of 
Christ a terribly dangerous thing to believe— 
much less to practise. 

Any academic argument in favor of a man’s 
fighting his way through life, with teeth and 
knuckles, on the ground that God’s great out- 
of-doors is red of fang and claw, immediately 
falls into serious difficulties when it is observed 
that Our Father—albeit in control of every liy- 
ing thing—has not devised the same regulations 
for all creatures. There is a code of conduct for 
the beaver, another for the bat, another for the 


“WHY ARE YE FEARFUL?” — 157 


bear, another for the bee. Solomon in all his 
glory was not arrayed like a lily of the field; but 
Solomon, if jealous of the lily to the point of 
attempting to imitate it, must not attempt to 
breathe carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. I hold 
no brief against the harbor seal. God made it, 
and it is a beautiful thing. But I must not try 
to live its life. I may be attracted by the inno- 
cence of the dove, but I must not attempt to 
fly. 

How very little “the laws of nature’’ actually 
figure in the programme of humanity’s mental, 
moral, and spiritual progress becomes evident 
when one reflects that it has been the main task 
of mankind’s free will to antagonize certain laws 
in order that higher demands may be met. It is 
not in contempt of the law of gravity that men 
raise up lofty buildings. But for that law the 
building could not stand, and, though the archi- 
tect breaks it, in the interest of human progress, 
he shows no disesteem for the principle itself. 
A man does not despise the tree he fells to the 
ground, nor does the act involve an impious 
thought concerning the God who had decreed 
that the tree should grow. Water-courses are 
deflected from the channels nature had appar- 
ently intended for them, in order that they may 
render service. It can easily be shown that men 
are expected to frustrate and intercept the op- 
eration of “natural laws” in the interest of hu- 
man progress. 


158 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


Jesus taught that the cultivation of the spiri- 
tual life of man is a consistent programme of 
rejecting the self-preservative passion which 
untamed nature insists upon as a hard-and-fast 
canon of physical existence. He would have but 
very little interest in the slogan “Safety First.” 
This does not mean, however, that the Master 
was unnecessarily reckless with his body. He 
was once tempted to be too indifferent to this 
matter, as we shall see presently; but solved the 
problem conclusively when he determined that 
it was wrong to “test” Providence. If a cause 
was of sufficient importance to warrant the risk 
of physical life, then a man’s bodily safety must 
take second place; but no man was ever to make 
a risky adventure just to ascertain to what lim- 
its of faith or audacity he might go, with the 
assumption that Providence would support him 
in his questionable experiment. 

How Jesus, himself, deduced his ethical code, 
in respect to courage, is a story deserving care- 
ful thought. It is found in the gospel narratives 
of his “temptations.” Whether these three 
specific problems, addressed to him early in his 
ministry, were the only temptations he ever 
encountered, is not stated. It is conceivable 
that as he regretfully watched the rich young 
ruler departing, unable to accept the severe 
terms of discipleship, Jesus may have been 
tempted to call him back and make things a bit 
easier for him. One can only guess about that. 


“WHY ARE YE FEARFUL?” 159 


Whatever thoughts may have occupied the 
Master’s mind at that moment, we know that 
he did not call the young man back. In that 
impressive silence which followed Pilate’s query 
“What is truth ?” Jesus may have been tempted 
to tell this Roman at least certain fragments of 
specific truth about the cowardice of the Judzan 
procurator; but if he had any such thought he 
dismissed it. Out of his love for Simon Peter 
Jesus may have been tempted to excuse him 
from a commission involving martyrdom. It 
may be that Jesus was tempted every day. 


IT 


Our present inquiry will concern, very briefly, 
a review of the three temptations—commonly 
referred to as “the temptations in the wilder- 
ness,” though the phrase is not correct, strictly 
speaking; for only the first was staged in the 
wilderness. Of that event we have only to do 
with the bare fact that Jesus was hungry. He 
was tempted to solve the problem of hunger by 
questionable processes. When he emerged from 
that situation, he was still hungry but willing to 
be hungry. In other words, he solved his prob- 
lem by refusing to attempt to solve it; for faith 
is sometimes functioning at its very highest ca- 
pacity when it decides to content itself with the 
question, if it cannot find the answer. 

In the case of Jesus, the rejected temptation 


160 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


did not merely leave him unsullied, as he was 
before. No man ever comes out of such a con- 
test exactly as he went in; surely not if he loses; 
and as certainly not if he wins. The business of 
saying “No!” to an unworthy proposal does 
not stop with mere negations; for in the process 
of declining a proposition full of menace to one’s 
moral selfhood, one attains to a new conscious- 
ness of personal power which thereafter de- 
mands positive expression. It may well be be- 
lieved that the spiritual growth of men whose 
moral grandeur is at once an example and in- 
spiration to their contemporaries, can be ex- 
plained not so much by the actual service they 
have rendered, in terms of philanthropy, as by 
their ability to capitalize a conquered tempta- 
tion. 

Jesus does not come out of the Jeshimon 
Wilderness merely unwhipped, having held his 
position without loss. He rises from it with 
positive convictions, ever thereafter to influ- 
ence his thinking. 

We must begin our study of this temptation 
with the understanding that we are to deal here 
with a fundamental economic problem. This is 
a matter of larger concern than the gnawing 
appetite of any one hungry man—even if that 
man were Jesus Christ. Nor is it the point at 
issue to discover whether or not the Master 
could have turned stones into bread. Had he 
tried to do it, and failed, that would have been 


“WHY ARE YE FEARFUL?” 161 


a very great disappointment. Had he tried it, 
and succeeded, that would have been a moral 
disaster. It would have made a tragic picture 
of him sitting there ravenously devouring a loaf 
that he had created by divine fiat. 

No; this is an economic problem. There was 
a common belief in men’s minds—a belief still 
maintained by the vast majority of people— 
that the whole of life is determined by economic 
principles. The supreme need and demand of 
life was bread, and everything that bread con- 
notes—food, clothes, shelter, houses and lands, 
money and jewels, business, things! All this 
was “‘bread.’”’ Bread was what men lived for, 
and on, and by. Why did they appear daily in 
the markets, where they haggled and quarrelled 
over split-penny trades, and lied and cheated 
and otherwise degraded themselves, if not for 
bread? ; 

Why did the farmer and the vine-grower and 
the fisherman strive with nature from dawn to 
dark, burrowing in a parsimonious soil, wres- 
tling with the elements, gambling with the 
weather, the insect pests, and prowling rodents; 
living dull, drab lives, enslaved to drudgery— 
if not for bread ? Why did men risk their safety 
and comfort in long caravan journeys across the 
desert sands, menaced by many foes; why did 
they trust their destiny to the precarious little 
boats wherein they sailed—if not for bread? 
Why did pioneers go forth, seeking new lands, 


162 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


sometimes at the cost of their lives—if not for 
bread? Why, you could examine the whole edi- 
fice of human society from crypt to spire, and 
every plan of it, every beam of it, every stone 
of it, was laid and maintained for economic 
reasons. 

Jesus goes under fire of the bread test with the 
old presuppositions clearly in mind. He comes 
out of it with these ancient theories completely 
revised. Bread was still important, but it was 
not the supreme fact of life. Bread had been 
suddenly outranked. The age-old struggle for 
it was now a secondary consideration. Moral 
integrity was more important than bread. 

The Master did not arrive at that decision 
merely uninjured. He had achieved stupendous 
spiritual growth. Heretofore his body, like the 
bodies of other men, had cried out: “Listen to 
me! I am the most important concern you can 
have! Find me bread to eat! Do you hear me? 
I want bread! Get it somehow; I don’t care 
how! Raise it, make it, buy it, beg it, steal it! 
It is nothing to me how you get it, so you get 
it! Have it honestly, or grab it out of another 
man’s hands, or work a miracle to produce it— 
the process is of no concern to me; but—get it !” 

It was not only a great hour in the experience 
of Jesus, but it was an important occasion for 
the whole moral world, when this tempted soul 
declared that man does not live by bread; for 
this decision registered a new freedom. Hence- 


“WHY ARE YE FEARFUL?” 163 


forth Jesus and all who follow him are at liberty 
to consider greater imperatives than bodily 
needs and sensory satisfactions. 

How a man is to answer the question “‘Is the 
stomach more important than the soul?” may 
depend considerably upon the recency of his 
dinner. Jesus went without bread for forty days 
before he felt himself entitled to offer an opinion 
on that subject. One can only imagine the spiri- 
tual exultation of the Master as he arrives 
at this new consciousness of fearlessness! His 
Father would henceforth safeguard him through 
any and all emergencies! Now he could go back 
to his chosen task with a sense of insurance 
against the annoying claims of the body. What 
cared he for his body? 

In this first flush of enthusiasm over his lib- 
erating discovery, Jesus mounts to the balcony 
of the temple and surveys the crowd of hungry, 
quarrelling, miserable people who, if he could 
only communicate his new joy to them, might 
share his independence of the old slaveries. It 
was easy to see that their chief thought was 
bread. It would be a great hour for them if he 
could contrive to make them understand that 
bread had been demoted from its ancient place 
of supremacy in favor of a higher quest, which 
guaranteed against all fears and appetites. But 
how could he attract their attention to his new 
discovery? Perhaps if he were to leap down 
among them unhurt they would listen to what- 


164 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


ever he chose to say. And why should he not 
do it? Had he not just demonstrated the sec- 
ondary importance of bodily safety?) Why not 
immediately capitalize this discovery? How 
better could he declare to these needy people his 
own emancipation from worry over physical con- 
ditions than to defy openly one of the laws which 
held men fast in their slavery? 

This second temptation of Jesus would never 
have become an issue with him, had he not en- 
countered and vanquished the first temptation. 
It is entirely believable that certain temptations 
are never addressed to men until they have suc- 
cessfully attended to certain other temptations. 
Jesus will not be inclined to leap from the pin- 
nacle of the temple until he has convinced him- 
self that the affairs of the body are of negligi- 
ble importance. Ibsen’s Brand discovers himself 
fairly swamped with bafHing moral problems 
only after he had successfully demonstrated his 
ability to grapple with a few of the tests his vo- 
cation had put upon him. 

Jesus comes out of this second temptation 
with a new appraisal of his task. It was not a 
mission that could be performed by a single 
spectacular act. He had been tempted to pre- 
sume on God’s protection that day, for the sake 
of taking a short-cut to the attention of the 
multitude. If successful, he could accomplish in 
one moment what it might require years to 
achieve by slower processes. 


OWI AAR EO YE HRARPUD YY. («165 


But Providence was not to be put to such 
tests. Merely because a man had, by faith and 
courage, made himself independent of the claims 
of appetite and fear, it did not follow that he 
had the right to jeopardize his body to astound 
a crowd—not even to bring that crowd a life- 
giving message. It was entirely right and proper 
to lose one’s life, if need be, to give so vital a 
message to the crowd; but it was unethical to 
use such means, and then expect to come out 
of it without a scratch. This resolution, how- 
ever, Was no more important than the other 
salient fact which Jesus laid hold upon at that 
hour. He had conceived a new idea about 
crowds while he sat up there, pondering over his 
dilemma and wrestling with his temptation. He 
reappraised all his thinking about crowds. Men 
were not to be saved or lost in the mass. Human 
society was not a solid chunk, to be thought of 
as if it were some gigantic animal, possessed of 
one mind, one need, and one desire. It was, 
rather, a sum total of that many little separate 
human worlds, wherein each individual had a 
right to his own peculiar apprehension of his 
spiritual heritage and the best way to develop it. 

One cannot but believe that it would be of 
great advantage to our present work in the field 
of the humanities if the leaders in sociological 
research to-day might consent to seat them- 
selves, mentally, at Jesus’ side, on top the tem- 
ple, and listen to him as he soliloquizes about 


166 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


crowds—about people in bulk. How easy it is 
to make card indices, tabulating human souls on 
a basis of nationality, economic rating, good or 
bad, clean or dirty, energetic or lazy, normal, 
abnormal, or subnormal. How simple it is to 
do humanity up into large packages and chuck 
them into standard-sized pigeon-holes. Here, 
for instance, is a swarm down in the market- 
place, in the plaza before the temple. We will 
call this the market-place crowd. Perhaps we 
can deal with it on the simple basis of its having 
come to buy and sell, to quarrel and fight over 
buying and selling, to be jealous and envious 
and predatory over buying and selling. 

And yet, how can one be sure that any one of 
these people should be bunched up with all the 
rest of them into a parcel labelled ‘Market- 
place” ? How easy to say of the whole twenty- 
five thousand men in attendance at a prize-fght 
that they are of a certain type—and not a very 
desirable type, either. How natural to say of 
the congregation in a crowded church that these 
people all belong together, generically related. 
Jesus knew better. 

Down the temple stairs comes the Man of 
Galilee, no longer eager to convert the mind of 
the pack, but anxious to appeal to the best in 
the individual. His temptation had been based 
upon his belief that he must deal with this 
crowd as a crowd. He would leap down among 
them in a death-defying adventure that would 


WEY CARE GY EO HRA Ri Lp” 167 


bring them up to a gasping amazement! But, 
no; the crowd could never be convinced as a 
crowd. He would have to tell his story to men 
as individuals. He would tell Peter and Andrew 
and John and James. It would be a slow process; 
but it was the better way. 

Doubtless it was the impatience of Jesus to 
communicate this story of conquered fears to a 
harried world that led him immediately there- 
after to contemplate, from a mountain-top, the 
problems of the nations. He was well aware that 
he had become the custodian of certain great 
spiritual facts which would make any nation 
strong and prosperous that practised them. He 
could make the nations listen to him, provided 
he was willing to concede them a few points. 
The temptation shaped itself somewhat in this 
wise: ““You may have these kingdoms of the 
world and dominate them; but you may have 
their confidence and discipleship only as you 
grant them the right to the old processes where- 
by national consciousness has been conserved. 
You, yourself, will have to bow before the an- 
cient duplicities and diplomacies. ‘The nations 
are not to have prosperity until they have peace; 
but, to insure their peace, they will rely upon 
the old ‘laws of nature.’”’ 

Jesus knew that this policy of the “‘armed 
peace” is no more practicable for a nation than 
for an individual. It was a confession of fear. 
The man who carried a gun signified that he was 


168 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


afraid. The nation that put its trust in its army 
was afraid. He wished the kingdoms of the 
world to adopt his programme of life, but the 
very first fact he would have to tell them was 
his discovery of the needlessness of fear, if one 
lived by faith. 

He knew he could not have the nations, there- 
fore, until, through the persuasion of individuals, 
enough men could be induced to believe and 
exemplify this theory of an undefended fearless- 
ness in their own conduct, to warrant a whole 
nation’s acceptance of the principle as a feasible 
law. It may have been in that very hour that 
Jesus evolved the programme of an apostolate, 
and formulated the great commission: “Go ye 
into all the world and preach the gospel to every 
creature.” 


III 


Among the various worries, bred of fear, which 
Jesus would delete from the lives of his follow- 
ers, is the anxiety about to-morrow. A man who 
lived by faith would refuse to permit to-morrow 
to become an encumbrance. This mythical 
institution, “‘to-morrow,”’ a day that has never 
yet arrived, is a menace both to the optimist 
and the pessimist. The former is always tempt- 
ed to borrow too much from it, to expect too 
much of it, to trust too much to it. The latter 
regards it as a dark and dangerous pitfall yawn- 


"WHY ARE YE FEARFUL?” 169 


ing before his feet. Jesus advised against one’s 
taking “‘anxious thought” about to-morrow. 

It is not to be concluded from this that the 
Master sanctioned either a nonchalant attitude 
toward the future or the cultus of opportunism 
which snatches up a transient pleasure or an in- 
ferior task to-day, rather than wait in patience 
for a more enduring j joy ora larger responsibil- 
ity. He drew a convincing picture of two men 
building houses, one for to-day, the other with 
a hope of future stability. Remembering how 
much less garrulous are the temperamentally 
prudent and conservative than the thriftless and 
opportunistic, one suspects that as these men 
built their houses, the careless believer in the 
permanence of sand may have received many 
felicitations from his own sort, on the ground of 
his being a very energetic fellow. To judge by 
appearances, he was a great deal more efficient 
than his plodding neighbor, who was still dig- 
ging a cellar and hauling stone when his progres- 
sive friend’s house was ready for shingles. 

When Jesus offered counsel against the de- 
bilitating menace of to-morrow, he was not 
pleading for sand-founded houses, short-term 
programmes, or a policy of “Take the cash, and 
let the credit go!”” He was only urging that to- 
morrow should not become a source of mental 
misery or the over-drawn account of optimism. 
He seemed to feel that in the calendar of human 
service there is only one day—to-day ! 


170 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


How very many generous deeds, planned with 
good intent, never arrived at fruition because 
there stood this fabulous to-morrow in which 
they might be performed. How very much of 
neural strain, which might have been invested 
in a better cause, has been wasted in anxieties 
over what might possibly come to pass to-mor- 
row. Jesus understood that the fearless life must 
reduce its worries to a minimum by keeping all 
of its affairs settled, day by day, in so far as that 
is humanly possible. This admonition occurs in 
many intensely practical statements, such as: 
“Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst 
thou art in the way with him.”’ How much of 
human wretchedness might be avoided if men, 
misunderstanding or disagreeing, would resolve 
to arrive at some amicable pact before part- 
ing. 

To live an unafraid life, men must refuse to 
carry grudges, for grudges cloud the spirit and 
hamper the freedom of the mind. ‘This is in ac- 
cord with modern research in psychology. It is 
infinitely better to forgive and forget an injury, 
even if the injured knows himself to have been 
fully within his rights and the other entirely in 
the wrong. There is a stock phrase, in these 
days of fast driving, to the effect that many a 
man who had the “right of way” is in the ceme- 
tery. Generally speaking, it is of little conse- 
quence in a quarrel which contender has the 
better case. If they part estranged, however 


“WHY ARE YE FEARFUL?” 171 


each may fancy himself the winner, both have 
suffered a serious loss. 

Indeed, Jesus insists that the man who wishes 
to live without worry, in order that he may live 
fearlessly, should insure himself against these 
soul-torturing strifes with his fellows to the 
point of yielding to any and all demands, rather 
than contest a claim. It is to be doubted if any 
maxim in the Galilean ethical code has been 
considered so difficult of practical execution as 
the commandment: ‘‘Whosoever shall smite 
thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other 
also.” If this injunction is examined, by “the 
case method,” it will be found that the occasions ~ 
for one’s exercise of this particular type of for- 
bearance are infrequent. Were one to review the 
experiences of a lifetime in which one, having 
been struck in the face, utterly without provoca- 
tion of the blow, was called upon to decide 
instantly whether to strike back or “turn the 
other cheek,” one might be surprised to note how 
seldom this problem had arisen. It is conceiv- 
able that large numbers of active and useful 
people arrive at a ripe three-score-and-ten with- 
out once encountering such a situation. 

The Master appears to have thought through 
these problems of human relations, coming out 
at length with the belief that in the long run 
‘““non-resistance” pays. His theory evidently 
held that the man who goes unarmed and of- 
fers no defense, can make out a better case for 


172 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


his fearlessness than the bully. His ability to 
take unjust punishment without retaliation 
may be mistaken for cowardice. That would be 
the hardest part of the “non-resistance” pro- 
gramme. But even this disadvantage, with all 
that may be said against it by the “‘red-blood- 
ed” apostle of swagger and swank, is not to be 
compared with the actual defilement of the 
man’s spirit who, when struck, seeks his op- 
pressor’s level and wallows with him like a 
beast. If he is man enough, he can recover from 
the injury of an unprovoked blow, and find him- 
self within an hour possessed of larger spiritual 
resources than he had before. But the blistering 
memory of a bestial encounter with an enemy, 
in which their mutual hate was brought to a 
devastating flame, will rouse him in the night 
and keep him awake and torture him—no mat- 
ter who won the so-called victory. 

The student finds considerable interest in the 
other brief cases in point which Jesus cites. Un- 
-doubtedly the statement had a purely local sig- 
nificance which admonishes: ‘‘ Whosoever shall 
compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.” 
It will be remembered that Jesus’ nation was 
virtually a slave state, tributary to a very 
haughty and overbearing empire. Perhaps it 
was not unusual for a private citizen to be im- 
posed upon by the soldiers and petty executives 
from Rome. A case of this kind appears when 
Simon of Cyrene is suddenly dragged out of the 


“WHY ARE YE FEARFUL?” 173 


crowd that lined the streets on the day of the 
crucifixion and compelled to assist Jesus in bear- 
ing a too heavy wooden cross. 

Naturally, Jesus was discreet in his remarks 
about that government. Not that he compro- 
mised with truth in this respect; but it would do 
so little good to hurl himself futilely at an insti- 
tution whose abuses he could not abate or cor- 
rect. Any misguided and indiscreet flare of in- 
dignation against the government would only 
work hardship to his friends. The priests real- 
ized this, and tried to make the most of it. On 
one occasion they asked him for a statement of 
his attitude toward the whole matter of taxation. 
Was it right for them to pay tribute to Cesar ? 
A large opportunity was opened to Jesus at that 
moment to plunge himself into a maze of difh- 
culty. If he were to say, “‘The tax is just,” the 
priests were prepared to excoriate him on the 
ground of disloyalty to the welfare of his own 
people. Did he say, “The tax is unjust,’’ his 
arrest would have followed within the hour. He 
dadged the issue, to put it frankly, by calling for 
a Roman coin. They handed him the money. 
On one side was a crude picture, in low relief, of 
the reigning emperor; on the other the well- 
known scrawl of the same person. “‘Whose 1m- 
age?” asked Jesus. “‘Czsar’s!” they replied. 
*“Whose superscription?” ‘“‘Czsar’s!” ‘Then 
it should be restored to Cesar.” The situation 
was fully met. Their question still remained un- 


174 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


answered, but it was a question they had no 
right to ask. 

Jesus has somewhat to say, however, about 
this delicate Jewish-Roman problem when he 
speaks of “‘the second mile.”” The sentence was 
more or less cryptic, but they knew what he 
meant. They were not to resist the impositions 
of their tyrannical Roman masters. If they were 
“impressed” for a mile it were better to continue 
for another mile than to resist. If every Jew 
had been wise enough to understand the psy- 
chology involved here and had practised it, one 
may suppose that Rome, deeming it unnecessary 
to maintain armed garrisons in Judza, in view 
of the fact that there was no insubordination 
or unrest among her Palestinian subjects, would 
have gladly withdrawn her expensive police. 
That would have solved the problem to the com- 
plete satisfaction of the general Jewish public. 
It was the “resisters” who kept the problem of 
the old animosities alive! It is the people who 
insist upon their “rights” that keep the powder 
factories working three shifts per day. 

The other illustration, also rather definitely 
localized to the time and country, resides in the 
statement: “If any man will sue thee at the law, 
and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak 
also.” The principle back of this is identical 
with the statements considered above. The 
main point of interest it has for the student of 
the gospel to-day rests in the fact that a defend- 


“WHY ARE YE FEARFUL?” tas 


ant in a modern court who, having lost his case 
and his coat, would voluntarily hand over his 
cloak, might find his act interpreted as “con- 
tempt of court,” involving his surrender of yet 
more apparel to settle with an offended magis- 
trate. The judge, in Jesus’ day, may not have 
been so sensitive to an implied and unspoken 
hint of an unfair decision. 

In short, the Master’s new programme of life 
utterly repudiated the ancient theory of ‘‘An 
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Men 
were counselled against attempts to match their 
adversaries in violence. But one is not to under- 
stand that this admonition left the follower of 
Jesus in a state of listless indifference to his op- 
pressors. There was a positive feature to one’s 
attitude toward foes. ‘‘ Love your enemies, bless 
them that curse you, do good to them that hate 
you, and pray for them which despitefully use 
you and persecute you.” This is a command- 
ment quite beyond the capacity of small-minded 
people. There is nothing simple or easy about 
it.. But men who have practised it are willing 
to testify that, however impracticable it may 
sound, its eventualities, in specific cases, start- 
lingly verify the Master’s statement that this is 
the process by which humanity becomes acutely 
conscious of its sonship to God. And when a 
man has arrived at this sense of his filial rela- 
tionship to the Source of all power, he needs no 
longer be afraid, 


176 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


IV 


Once possessed of the firm conviction that he 
is, in very truth, a child of God, the believer lives 
by the light of a faith in an unseen guidance 
which enables him to see his way. He finds him- 
self increasingly empowered with the capacity 
to discriminate between the transitory and the 
permanent in life. He endeavors to deal with 
realities. Jesus told his countrymen that they 
acted like little children, playing in the market- 
place—playing they were happy, playing they 
were sad; they had not sounded the depths of 
life to see what things really were sources of joy 
and sadness. 

Many a man fears old age. He tries to insure 
himself against want through that non-produc- 
tive period by laying up something for a rainy 
day. It does not occur to him that even as he 
had lived, through his youth, upon anticipation, 
he must spend his declining years in retrospec- 
tion. He thinks his old age demands nothing 
but an abundance of food and a comfortable 
shelter, forgetting that his sole occupation will 
be reminiscence and his most conspicuous pos- 
session his memory. It is a sad story that Jesus 
tells of the man who resolutely prepared for his 
oncoming years of enforced leisure by storing his 
barns with grain. The consuming passion of his 
active life was to hoard corn. Doubtless this 


“WHY ARE YE FEARFUL?” — 177 


thrifty man marvelled at the lack of prepared- 
ness exhibited all about him by men who were 
making no arrangements to insure their peace 
and happiness in the period of their senescence. 
And it was a great day in this man’s life when, 
having rebuilt his barns on a larger scale and 
having filled them all to the eaves with grain, he 
announced that he had completed his long task. 
Henceforth he could eat, drink, and be merry. 

It was at this point that an angel arrived with 
the statement that this man’s soul was required. 
It was the only thing the foresighted farmer had 
neglected in his programme of preparedness; and 
now, it appeared, this was the only thing that 
would be required. When the angel called him 
the summons did not imprecate him as a rogue 
or a rascal. With candid truth the messenger 
said: ‘‘Come, fool!” 

It may confidently be believed that any man 
who comes into his old age loaded with memories 
of generous deeds, who finds in his mail occa- 
sional letters of appreciation from men to whom 
his acts of service had brought happiness and 
prosperity, who, at length, draws the drapery of 
his couch about him and lies down to pleasant 
dreams, dies rich. And no man need fear the 
arrival of twilight who had found life’s realities 
by the torch of faith. 3 

The same logic applies to the haunting dread 
of sudden death. Men who live by faith live 
fearlessly, for they are ready. Because death 


178 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


so frequently comes unannounced, “like a thief 
in the night,” it behooves every man to expect 
this visitation and be prepared for it. It goes 
without saying that if the summoned were to 
have a few days’ notice, he would try to be in 
readiness for his visitor. “‘If the good man of 
the house,” said Jesus, “‘had known at what hour 
the thief would come, he would have been on 
the alert.” 

The Master’s cure for fear is a simple process 
of determining spiritual values as supreme over 
material things. Having reached that decision, 
the next step is the highest possible cultivation 
of the spiritual. This cultivation proceeds by 
the exercise of faith, and faith is grounded in 
one’s consciousness of being a child of God. 


CHAPTER VIII 
“WHATSOEVER YE WOULD” 


summarize the whole of his teachings con- 

cerning men’s proper attitude toward one 
another, it is the ‘‘Golden Rule.” Jesus did not 
call it by that name, nor did his disciples. The 
phrase does not figure in the terminology of re- 
ligious thought until a comparatively recent 
date. Whoever first called it the “‘Golden Rule” 
may have thought he had come upon a felicitous 
title for this vital statement, inasmuch as gold 
has been a symbol of worth. But with us gold 
does not so much carry the concept of worth as 
of the ornamental. Gold is something very nice 
to possess, but it can be done without. Most 
people can and do live without it in any appre- 
ciable quantity. 

_And when this term “‘gold” is not doing duty 
as a symbol for things ornamental, it is carrying 
the illusory burden of some idea woven of dream- 
stuff. It is easy to fall into the way of thinking 
about the “Golden Rule” on about the same 
terms as the “Golden Fleece” or the ‘‘Golden 
Apple,’’ legendary matters which possess no re- 
ality, or in the same mood in which one views an 
illusory and unattainable “‘Golden Age.” 

179 


I’ any one statement of Jesus may be said to 


180 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


If, therefore, we are to speak of this striking 
sentence as the “Golden Rule,” let it be borne 
in mind that it is not something founded on sen- 
timent and yoked to a myth. It is not some- 
thing merely to be hoped for and dreamed of, 
like a fabulous “Golden City.” It is, rather, an 
energy—a kinetic energy—which, like any other 
dynamic urge, must, if utilized at all, be prac- 
tised under certain fixed regulations, regulations 
which promise and threaten. Electricity can be 
so conducted into one’s house, through ignorance 
or fraud on the part of incompetent or unscrupu- 
lous workmen, that the power of it is a constant 
menace to one’s safety. In that case, the more 
power admitted, the greater the risk. The fact 
that light and heat are actually coming through 
this defective wiring is quite beside the point; 
for at any moment the energy that had been 
serving as a benefit may become an active 
enemy. 

The Golden Rule—for all its innocuous and 
dreamy label—is exactly this sort of an energy. 
Properly adjusted to life, it gives promise of 
greater constructive power than any other force. 
Incorrectly applied to the problems of society, 


it holds out dire threats to the people who mis- 
handle it. 


The problem of the Golden Rule, briefly 
stated, is to do unto others what you would like 
to have others do unto you; not what others 
have done, are doing, or may yet do unto you, 


“WHATSOEVER YE WOULD” 181 


but what you would like to have them do. This, 
one sees at a glance, is not a mere passive and 
supine acceptance of whatever unkindness, con- 
tumely, or fraud may be practised upon one by 
other people. It is not the mere negative virtue 
of sitting still and refusing to throw back the 
bricks that have been hurled at you. The Gold- 
en Rule is a positive energy which not only re- 
fuses to do unto others the things they do that 
bring you pain and loss, but actually performs 
toward others such service and benefit as you 
wish they would perform for you. 

It would be very difficult for any one man 
alone to practise the Golden Rule in a world 
committed unanimously to the policy of treating 
others “‘as they treat you.”’ When Jesus enun- 
ciated this principle, he was not alone in his be- 
lief. He had succeeded in persuading a few other 
people to accept it. Shortly after his tragedy, 
as many as one hundred and twenty men and 
women were found willing to go to almost any 
length of adventure and sacrifice to demonstrate 
this theory of correct living. But in Jesus’ case 
the Golden Rule was so dangerous to practise 
that it brought him to his death. At any mo- 
ment, up to the final act on the cross, he could 
have gone free by discarding this principle. 
That the Golden Rule was hard to practise dur- 
ing the apostolic days the history of the martyrs 
bears tragic witness. If the catacombs tell a 
truthful story, many people who tried to live by 


182 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


this statute found it a very dangerous law to 
obey. 

Now that civilization has become more and 
more advised of the social and economic values 
of this maxim, it is not so difficult to live by it, 
at least in the major matters of ethical concern 
as they affect the relationship of individuals. 
Surely, anybody can see that the more people 
who can be induced to accept this doctrine, the 
easier it will be for all who attempt to practise 
it. Like any other sentiment, it must first be 
made operative and successful in small social 
units, like the family, the neighborhood, the 
school, the factory, the church, these units 
combining and co-operating with other larger 
groups, until the principle is recognized in the 
corporate consciousness of the state. 

This does not mean that no individual in the 
employ of a large department store can safely 
obey this law until all the other employees share 
his belief, any more than it is necessary for every 
employee in that organization to be scrupulously 
honest before any one employee can safely be a 
person of integrity; but it does mean that as the 
numbers increase who are pledged to the Golden 
Rule, the law becomes increasingly valuable and 
practicable. 

Whoever is disposed to doubt whether the 
numbers of adherents to this principle are in- 
creasing should be reminded that within our 
lifetime the first really constructive and serious 


“WHATSOEVER YE WOULD” 183 


effort is being made, on the part of the nations, 
to arrive at an understanding based upon the 
Golden Rule. There may be room for doubt 
whether this bridge-burning renunciation of cer- 
tain national rights, previously considered of su- 
preme importance, is an entirely safe principle 
for any one state to adopt, in the face of the re- 
fusal of other states to conform to that pro- 
eramme. It may be some time yet before this 
policy can be internationally agreed upon. But 
the day is coming—coming so fast that many of 
us who are now living will see it in active opera- 
tion. A hundred years from now men will be 
utterly mystified as they read the history of 
wars waged by a civilization that, in all other 
matters, seemed to be approximately of normal 
mind. 

It is not in the province of our discussion to 
enlarge upon the issues involved in an attempt 
to arrive at international amity. It may be re- 
marked, however, that the very grounds of our 
depression over the present relationships have 
an element of hope in them. With horror we 
read of new explosives, lethal gases, and “death 
rays,” with a capacity for such wholesale de- 
struction of life and property as was never 
known before in the world. Predictions have 
been freely offered that another war would mean 
the end of our civilization. Assuming this to be 
true, may it not also and consequently be true 
that the nations, fully aware of the nature of 


184 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


that calamity, will now be much more reluctant 
to resort to war, as a solvent of their difficulties, 
than ever before? It may be that the diabolical 
ingenuity with which nations have made ready 
to annihilate one another—a fitting and logical 
climax to the long development of scientized 
murder on a colossal scale—will be shown to be 
one of the excellent reasons for adopting the 
Golden Rule internationally. 

But however depressing is the tardiness of 
states to understand the practical values of this 
“‘whatsoever-ye-would” law, nobody can doubt 
the increasing efficacy of it in the programme of 
the smaller and less unwieldy social units. 
Communities—even very large cities—have 
been making some startling gains lately in the 
demonstration of this theory. Great industrial 
concerns have resorted to it after trying every 
other expedient to solve their problems of un- 
rest, disloyalty, and mutual antagonism. If it 
is argued that they have not done so for ethical 
reasons, but purely because of the sound eco- 
nomic principle involved, this is only an added 
testimony in favor of the everlasting rightness 
of Jesus’ mind. If the things which Jesus said 
men ‘‘ought” to do, have now been shown to 
be the things that they ‘‘must” do, if they 
would live and prosper, that only brings new 
evidence to support the case of this divinely in- 
spired Galilean. 

And it adds an interesting complex to the 


“WHATSOEVER YE WOULD” ~ 185 


whole Golden Rule problem; to wit: not only 
does it become easier to obey this law, with every 
additional recruit brought into the “‘whatsoev- 
er-ye-would” camp; but it becomes increas- 
ingly difficult for men to live any other way. 
Within the past twenty-five years we have wit- 
nessed a marked change in the social position 
of the mean man who lives for himself alone. 
Until recently he might turn a deaf ear to every 
appeal for philanthropic aid, and still maintain 
his place in society. It goes without saying 
that people remarked behind his back upon his 
lack of generosity; but at the meeting of the 
bank directors, to which he belonged, nobody 
took him to task for being a selfish old miser. 
To-day the man who tries to live for himself and 
his immediate family is experiencing so many 
grave discomforts that it is only by the utmost 
resolution he can maintain an attitude of un- 
charitableness. The solicitor who invites him to 
release some of his wealth into the channels 
which supply the more serious social needs, 1s 
not now some timid woman, earnestly begging 
a pittance for some ill-supported agency of 
mercy, but a business man, himself of wealth 
and influence, perhaps, boldly stating the im- 
perative needs of a large group of philanthropic 
concerns. Appeals for help used not to reach 
this mean man. He barricaded himself behind 
a battery of clerks, and became incomunicado 
to other people’s problems. To-day he faces a 


186 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


bombardment, put on by the “Community 
Chest,” that makes it utterly impossible for him 
to hold his place in the respect of his business 
colleagues, unless he at least makes a pretense 
of altruism by doing his share in terms of money 
and work. Once it was easier for a man to live 
for himself than for others. It has become less 
and less easy, until now it is a position so inde- 
fensible and untenable that only an occasional 
wealthy recluse can qualify as “‘miser.” 

When Jesus said, “If I be lifted up, I will 
draw all men unto me,” he doubtless preferred 
that they would be drawn by love and faith; 
but however they are drawn and whatever may 
be the exact urge that brings them to a practice 
of the Christ-life, they are coming to it! Every 
day it becomes more difficult for the individual 
to resist the demands of Christian civilization; 
and the more potential he is, the more he feels 
the tug of this energy. 


IT 


Too much attention cannot be paid by pro- 
fessing and teaching Christians to the task of 
defining the Golden Rule as a positive, aggres- 
sive principle. It is to be suspected that the 
‘“‘non-resistance”’ theory, which we have re- 
marked upon previously, could be shown to be 
an impractical and almost futile recommenda- 
tion, unless practised in combination with this 


“WHATSOEVER YE WOULD” 187 


kinetic altruism comprehended by the law we 
are now considering. 

Detailed advice relating to the most feasible 
application of the Golden Rule, in the experience 
of the average man, is offered in Jesus’ counsel 
to feed the hungry, house the homeless, minister 
to the sick, and visit the imprisoned, concluding 
with the trenchant statement: “Inasmuch as ye 
have done it unto the least of these, my breth- 
ren, ye have done it unto me.” 

The history of men’s efforts to perform such 
philanthropies is intensely interesting. It is 
impossible here to do more than hint at this 
progression in the field of practical charity. Un- 
til recent times such deeds were sporadic. The 
generous individual, moved by pity and sym- 
pathy, made his gift to the needy who happened 
to be under his personal observation. Not often 
did he hunt them up; rarely did he investigate 
the causes of their misfortune. They needed 
fuel, and he sent them a load of coal. They were 
hungry, and he fed them. They were sick, and 
he provided a physician. 

It became evident that this process was in- 
effective. The contribution it made to the solu- 
tion of the problem of human misery was very 
small. Social groups endeavored to relieve this 
situation by organizing the local charities, to 
avoid pauperizing duplications of gifts and in- 
sure against neglecting many worthy cases in 
which a desperate need had been too proud or 


188 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


too modest to disclose itself. This was a long 
step in advance of the bungling procedure by 
which food and clothing were distributed by the 
benevolently disposed, at such seasons of the 
year as prompted a peculiar surge of charity. 
And then, when these charity organizations had 
achieved enough influence and confidence to 
warrant their study of the problems involved, 
they began to suspect that the mere distribution 
of material necessities to the poor, and medical 
service to the indigent sick, was but making an 
open bid for an increasing list of dependents, un- 
less certain character-building agencies could go 
hand in hand with these charities. 

Nobody had thought much about the “pro- 
phylactic” feature of human rehabilitation. It 
was thought to be sufficient to deal with poverty, 
illness, and general misfortune when the condi- 
tion had become acute; but no one had seemed 
much concerned about heading it off in advance 
of the acute stage. Latterly it has been deter- 
mined that one way to help a sick baby is 
through free medical advice offered the mother 
before the infant is born. It has been found 
that a good way to minister to the sick is in 
the establishment of fresh-air camps which keep 
under-privileged people from becoming sick. 
The day nursery solves certain problems of the 
poverty-stricken home before these problems 
blossom forth into a grave social menace. In- 
stead of waiting until the youth arrives in prison, 


“WHATSOEVER YE WOULD” 189 


we are finding it advisable to minister to him 
through the Boy Scouts, the Young Men’s 
Christian Association, and vocational commis- 
sions. 

This new attitude toward philanthropy is still 
an experiment, but it has already proved the 
case for an aggressive altruism that does not sit 
supinely waiting a call to deal with an almost 
irremediable problem, preferring to handle it be- 
fore it has become hopeless. Of course, a great 
deal of misapplied sentiment has recently been 
tearing down these benefits of a scientized altru- 
ism. If, on the one hand, we are to reconstruct 
society by encouraging the weak to assume all 
the obligations of which they are capable, we 
must, on the other hand, continue to place suffi- 
cient deterrents in the path of persons com- 
mitted to a programme of lawlessness to insure 
the perpetuation of this splendid scheme of al- 
truism. So long as it is possible for the drunken 
driver of a motor-car to escape with a paltry 
fine, after having fled from the scene of an acci- 
dent in which he carelessly injured a child, 
everything that our progressive philanthropy is 
doing to mend human society and create a bet- 
ter citizenship is heavily handicapped. To the 
proper execution of the Golden Rule in these 
days, when we are attempting to give it its full- 
est chance to operate, we must have not only 
the finest possible agencies for the assistance of 
the poor and defective into their rightful oppor- 


190 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE’ 


tunities, but a new firmness in dealing with the 
types who, in increasing numbers, are making 
human life cheap and crime easy! There will 
not be much use in going down into the zones of 
the poor and discouraged, to collect their little 
boys, and feed them, and patch them up, and 
put them through the clinics, and fill their teeth, 
and wash their necks, and teach them Lincoln’s 
Gettysburg Address and the flag salute and six- 
teen ways to knit a knot and build a camp-fre, 
if, after having done all that, we are obliged, at 
length, to turn them loose into a society that 
merely grins contemptuously at the laws of the 
commonwealth ! 

In Jerusalem Jesus found, over a certain al- 
leged healing spring, a huge pavilion, built to 
shelter the people who lay about, on the stone 
flagging, waiting for a chance to enter the water, 
at the irregular and unannounced seasons when 
it was supposed an angel invested the pool with 
therapeutic properties. It is to be doubted if the 
city fathers in Jerusalem had much faith in that 
pool. But the down-and-outers had faith in it 
and were willing to lie there for days and weeks, 
waiting and watching for a display of its healing 
virtues. The pavilion had been built to protect 
this unfortunate company while it nursed the 
hope of a restoration. | 

Any scheme of altruism that merely builds 
pavilions over wretchedness is not a scientific 
proposition. The task of philanthropy has quite 


“WHATSOEVER YE WOULD” tort 


outgrown the wish to make miserable people as 
comfortable as possible in their misery. It must 
now proceed to bring them out of their predica- 
ment. And the same rule must govern us in this 
worthy enterprise that lies at the root of any 
quest for life’s realities. Jesus’ belief that man 
does not live by bread alone; that the real things 
are not food, raiment, and the material posses- 
sions which are subject to destruction by moth, 
rust, and thieves; that if men are to be helped 
into a larger life it will have to be by way of 
spiritual advancement—should apply, also, to 
our social programmes. The objects of our 
charity must be morally rehabilitated! This 
will come to pass only as kindness, gentleness, 
and material aid are offered in combination with 
a firm demand that the laws of society shall be 
respected and enforced. 

The practical considerations of this problem 
are very grave. Our obvious need is to decrease 
the number of persons who compose the “fourth 
estate,” by raising them up into self-respect and 
economic freedom. ‘Thus only can society pro- 
tect itself against the menace of a discontented, 
underfed, ignorant substratum of life. History 
has some tragic tales to tell of idle riches that 
took no account of the sullen poor until the lat- 
ter had become numerous enough to put their 
superiors into the shambles and fill the gutters 
of their proud streets with the blood of a mis- 
guided aristocracy. It is good insurance—if one 


192 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


is not disposed to view this problem in any 
higher light—to keep the numbers of the rest- 
less and revengeful folk at the bottom of society 
as small as possible. There is only one way to 
do that, and that way is not through the build- 
ing of institutions to shelter them in their mis- 
ery. They must be lifted out of their degrada- 
tion. That process will be largely a moral issue. 
It cannot be done with food, clothes, and medi- 
cine. It cannot be done in the polyclinic. These 
“other things” will help, but the moral issue is 
more important. 

Whether there may be any reasonable hope 
advanced that, along with our scientific chari- 
ties, we can also inculcate a respect for law, will 
depend seriously upon the attitude of the gen- 
eral public toward legislation. The prosperous 
and philanthropic merchant or manufacturer 
who, as an expression of his interest in the wel- 
fare of the children of poverty, annually donates 
thousands of dollars to the support of agencies 
which will give these unfortunates more liber- 
ties, more confidence, and more opportunity to 
express their own wills, but who makes it possi- 
ble for the rumor to gain circulation that he 1s, 
himself, a lawbreaker, may as well keep his 
money. In the long run, any practice of the 
Golden Rule that gives people a larger chance 
to achieve human liberties, but fails to teach 
and demand a respect for every man’s human 
rights, is surely not in accord with the wish of 
its divine author. 


“WHATSOEVER YE WOULD” 193 


Iil 


We are naturally led to inquire, in pursuance 
of the problem of human relations, what Jesus 
taught in respect to law and government, and 
what was his attitude on this subject. Would 
he, in the interest of a consistent policy of 
“‘non-resistance”’ and observance of the so-called 
Golden Rule, dispose of laws, police, courts, and 
judges? Nothing is clearer than that Jesus’ rec- 
ommendations in the field of altruism postulate 
a system of civil and moral laws. In his own day 
the civil and moral laws were practically one. 
Moreover, they were vigorous, to the very point 
of being austere. We have no word from Jesus 
advising the abrogation of any of these statutes 
on the ground of severity. 

When the rich young ruler asks for the terms 
of immortal life, he is questioned first about his 
morality. From his youth up, he replied, he had 
kept the laws. Jesus commended him, and add- 
ed: “One thing thou lackest. If thou wilt be 
perfect, sell what thou hast and give to the poor, 
and come, follow me.” This counsel to invest 
his all in charity was predicated upon his having 
pursued a law-abiding programme that lacked 
but one point of perfection ! 

“Think not,” said the Master, “that I am 
come to destroy the law... but to fulfil.” 
Surely, any modern school of socialism that 
wishes to make Jesus the attorney for a cause 
wherein every man shall have his own ideas on 


194 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


the subject of human conduct, will find diff- 
culty in disposing of his statement respecting 
the laws of his day: *‘ Whosoever shall break one 
of the least commandments, and shall teach 
men so, he shall be called the least in the king- 
dom of heaven.” 

There were many ceremonial laws among the 
Hebrews in which Jesus could not be expected 
to be interested. They had neither outcome nor 
purpose. Such learned disputations as were held 
over the proper depth of a hem on the priest’s 
robe and the exact proportions of the herbs em- 
ployed as incense, and the procedure of wash- 
ing the dishes used in the sacrificial rites—these 
matters were, to his mind, not worth the trouble 
spent upon them. A law respecting the Sab- 
bath, which defined as “reaping” the act of 
shelling a few kernels of wheat, as one walked 
through a ripened harvest-field, did not impress 
him as a moral obligation at all. But in all mat- 
ters involving personal or property rights, his 
advices only supplemented the existing statutes. 
It is stated that after his healing of a leper, he 
commanded the beneficiary to go at once and 
show himself to the priest, offering the “‘gift” 
enjoined by the Mosaic code. While it may be 
assumed that if Jesus had pronounced this man 
free of his leprosy, there was little reason for a 
priestly investigation of the case, the Master’s 
attitude in this matter discloses how important 
he believed this hygienic regulation to be. 


“WHATSOEVER YE WOULD” 195 


Jesus recognized the strong necessity for a 
reform in men’s attitude toward the laws of 
the day. “Tradition” had made it possible for 
privileged men to dodge many of these funda- 
mental laws. Even the ancient commandment 
“Honor thy father and thy mother” had become 
so encrusted with Talmudic amendments that a 
dishonorable child could deny his obligation to 
support his parents in their old age. Apparently 
the Master was stoutly against any kind of legal 
interpretation that would make it possible for 
the spirit of a wise and just law to be violated. 

But while he saw the need of reform, Jesus 
frowned upon any fanatical procedure that 
would attempt to correct every evil in the world 
by drastic means. ‘The kingdom of heaven could 
afford to be patient, in respect to some condi- 
tions, rather than enter upon a policy of ex- 
termination. 

He illustrated his thought with the parable of 
the field in which wheat had been sown. By 
night an enemy sought revenge by sowing tares 
in this field. Presently the good grain and the 
bad grew side by side. The servants were for 
weeding out the tares as they grew; but the 
owner prudently decided to wait until the har- 
vest. Under the winnowing-fan the discrimina- 
tion would occur and the tares could be de- 
stroyed. 

One is disposed to think that this parable 
should be called to the attention of many loyal 


196 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


and industrious servants who feel the necessity 
of plucking up all the tares, even to the jeopardy 
of the wheat harvest. The Christian churches of 
a certain city, for example, sincerely believing 
that the Sunday operation of places of amuse- 
ment and recreation should be abolished, bring 
enough pressure to bear upon the public officials 
to achieve their wish. It is their hope and ex- 
pectation that the closing of these amusement 
institutions will add glory to the church. The 
fact that thousands of people, believing that 
they have been deprived of what they consider 
to be a harmless pleasure, through the irascible 
zeal of the church, harden their hearts against 
any appeal from that quarter, should be sufh- 
cient evidence that this procedure is at least a 
highly debatable matter. Something tells one it 
would not have been Jesus’ way of dealing with 
such a problem. True, he indignantly drove 
some secular enterprises out of the temple, but 
that was a different matter. If the churches 
would like to attempt certain reforms of this 
sort to-day their precedent for it will be as good 
as their need of it is great. 

It will be well for us to remember that Jesus 
considered the public with great compassion: 
“Sheep having no shepherd.” John the Bap- 
tist, a fiery reformer, was so disappointed with 
the Master’s pacific attitude that from his prison 
cell he sent messengers to inquire whether Jesus 
really was The Christ, or should they expect 


MWHATSOEVER YE WOULD”) 197 


another. John had predicted that when this di- 
vine character appeared, he would summon the 
world to judgment for its iniquities. The axe 
would be laid at the root of the tree, the win- 
nowing-fan would “purge the threshing-floor.”’ 

But Jesus did not come with an axe or a flail. 
He never denounced these unhappy worldlings 
who sought surcease from their drudgeries. 
They moved him to pity and appealed to his 
spirit of compassion. He wished them to be his 
friends, for only thus would he be able to give 
them aid and counsel. John said: “He will 
thoroughly purge his floor!” Jesus said: ‘Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, 
and I will give you rest.” 


CHAPTER IX 
“STRAT ISTHE, GATES 


HEN Jesus pleads for a more abundant 
life, he recognizes the fact that much 
of life’s enlargement and enrichment 

must come to pass through the stern elimination 
of useless and restraining impedimenta. 

The “broad way” which the majority trav- 
elled, because it permitted their carrying along 
with them all the luggage of sensory pleasure, 
was in reality a road leading to destruction. 
The way into life was narrow. Men who hoped 
to become useful and successful must be pos- 
sessed of a singleness of purpose. Their lives 
would be briefly lived, and to do the best they 
could it would be impossible for any one of them 
to achieve much by way of service. This made 
it quite imperative that they should enter upon 
life undeterred by unnecessary burdens. 

It is a very vigorous gospel that counsels: “If 
thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast 
it from thee. If thy right hand offend thee, cut 
it off.” 

Men discover and develop their strengths 
mostly by dealing severely with their weak- 
nesses. The elimination of debilitating influ- 
ences and inclinations from one’s life is of as 

198 


VoOUR ATH AS THE! GARTH? 199 


much importance as the accretion of energies 
which upbuild. Sometimes, if certain potential 
souls were not disposed to attend to these neces- 
sary eliminations, themselves, it was done for 
them through very painful processes. 

Pursuant to this theme, Jesus tells a story 
which, although no longer than “the Lord’s 
Prayer,” covers a broad sweep of three years. 
It is a parable about a tree. 

A certain man had planted a fig-tree. It was 
not an accidental growth; it had been planted 
with design. Strangely enough, this tree was 
not planted in an orchard, but in a vineyard, 
where it may have come to think of itself as 
somewhat apart from the busy life of its en- 
vironment. It may have been more magnani- 
mous than to hold its humble friends, the vines, 
in contempt; but assuredly there was a marked 
contrast observable between the majestic bear- 
ing of this favored tree and the awkward, un- 
gainly appearance of the vines whose scanty fo- 
lage boasted neither flower nor perfume; for- 
ever hobbling on ugly crutches. 

Moreover, this tree might almost have been 
pardoned for reflecting that it was an aristocrat 
among trees, coming from an ancestry so long 
and honorable that its name adorned the pages 
of every great religious book in the world, its 
portrait stamped upon the empire’s coins and 
crests. 

Perhaps the vine-dresser who cared for the 


200 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


vineyard was partly responsible for the tree's 
self-delusion. Apparently he had considered the 
fig-tree chiefly as an ornament. He admired its 
beauty and symmetry. Perhaps he had hoped 
each season that some fruit would grow. But he 
did nothing to encourage it. 

The tree never considered itself a delinquent. 
It rejoiced in its lineage, beauty, and the distinc- 
tion of being more important than its neighbors. 
At length, however, the vine-dresser came to 
have certain misgivings about the tree. Had 
there been a single fig hidden in its foliage, he 
would have had more joy over it than in all the 
baskets of grapes produced by his vines. Just as 
there is ‘more joy in heaven over one sinner that 
repenteth”—dragged from degradation—than 
over the salvation of ninety-nine highly respec- 
table people who had lived their circumscribed 
lives propped up by the trellis of conventional- 
ity, so would there have been more joy over one 
fig on this worthless tree than over dozens of 
bushels of grapes from these plodding vines. 

Yet such had been his affection for this tree 
that the vine-dresser had left undone a few 
things which might have promoted its useful- 
ness. Out of the abundance of his compassion, 
he had hesitated to introduce drastic remedies. 
Every season he had stood there, with knife and 
spade and pruning-hook in his hands, wondering 
whether he should perform or wait. 

On the occasion of the owner’s third annual 


“STRAIT IS THE GATE” 201 


visit to his vineyard, since the tree had become 
of an age to demonstrate its usefulness, he 
stopped before it, and remarked to the vine- 
dresser: “These three years I have come seeking 
fruit on this tree, and finding none. Cut it 
down!” 

He did not say it angrily. He was not loud 
before it. He did not shake his fist at the tree. 
He was calm and dispassionate. He had planted 
this tree with a fixed purpose in mind, expecting 
fruit. Twice he had been disappointed, but had 
said nothing. His period of patient waiting was 
now over. ‘The trial had been sufficient. If the 
tree had proposed to bear fruit, it would have 
done so by this time. “Cut it down!” com- 
manded the owner. “‘Why doth it cumber the 
ground ?” 

At this point the vine-dresser presumes to 
bargain for the life of the worthless tree. Per- 
haps it was partly his fault that there were no 
figs on the tree. He promised that if his lord 
would give the tree one more chance, ‘‘this year 
yet,” he would prune it, and dig about it, and 
fertilize it. After that, if there was still no yield, 
he would indeed cut it down. 


II 


A great many people are living what they 
imagine to be ornamental lives. They are ‘‘qual- 
ity folk,” and fully aware of it. Had they been 


202 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


born vines, they should have been content to 
take their humble place in the vineyard and 
bear grapes effectively and uncomplainingly, 
without envying a “Burbanked”’ neighbor on 
the right his larger fruit, or rejoicing over the 
friend on the left whose grapes were so sour they 
could set on edge the teeth of the fourth genera- 
tion of consumers. 

‘They insist that, had they been born vines, 
they would have accepted the lot of the vine 
without complaint. In that case they would 
never have tried to be beautiful, seeing how im- 
possible that is for a grape-vine; they would 
have been content to lean upon the arbor for 
support and be thankful they had an arbor to 
lean on. But, as the matter stands, they do not 
happen to be vines. They are beautiful trees, 
standing on their own legs, lifting their heads 
to the air and sunshine, acquainted with the 
birds and the blue sky. Privileged folk! 

Perhaps they had moments of misgiving when 
they were obliged, for the safeguarding of their 
own interests, to send a new root into the near 
vicinity of some struggling vine, thus drinking 
up all the moisture and nourishment on which 
this humble thing had been depending for its 
materials of existence; but, they reflected, that 
is the mysterious way of life. Some have, and 
some have not. 

It is possible that if some one came to us 
ornamental people every morning with the in- 


“STRAIT IS THE GATE” 203 


formation that it was high time we produced 
some fruit to justify our existence, we might 
view our own situation with more concern, 
though one may not be too sure of that. Jesus 
deals with this thought in his parable of a 
strictly ornamental soul, who, after a life of 
attire in purple and fine linen and sumptuous 
fare daily, had gone to his reckoning, where, 
finding reasons for wishing he had lived to better 
purpose, he requested that a messenger be sent 
to warn his five brothers against the manner in 
which they were spending their days. ‘The 
spirit of Abraham, to whom the request came, 
remarked: ‘They have Moses and the prophets; 
let them hear them.” 

“Nay, Father Abraham,” persisted the troub- 
led spirit, “but if one went unto them from the 
dead, they will repent.” 

Abraham was not to be dislodged from his 
position that the brothers’ information was sufh- 
cient. “If they hear not Moses and the proph- 
ets,” he said, “neither will they be persuaded 
though one rose from the dead.” 

It may be considered that for us the revela- 
tion of God’s expectation of us is sufficient. We 
have had “Moses and the prophets,’ and one 
has risen from the dead to confirm his divine 
mandates. 

Possibly, if a heavenly courier warned us per- 
sonally every day that we should set about our 
task of bearing fruit, we would give some heed. 


204 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


It is not sure. But nobody speaks to us directly, 
in a tone of authority. The voice of the Church 
is feeble, and is regarded with little more than 
an amused tolerance by the general public, bent 
on to-day’s pleasure. 

If, however, the indifferent soul is sufficiently 
potential to be capable of high service, the 
chances are strong that, rather than lose the 
beautiful tree, the vine-dresser will approach it 
with pruning-shears, denuding it of its foliage 
and leaving it stripped of everything that had 
made for its pride, digging about its roots and 
pouring in strong nourishment, for he hopes to 
save the life of his favorite tree. 

We have quite outgrown the ancient idea of 
God as a “capricious” Deity, who intervened 
in the affairs of the individual, bringing him to 
task sometimes by way of severe chastisement. 
We have argued against that theory of Provi- 
dence on the ground that God, as the great law- 
giver, must also keep His own laws. We have 
insisted that His intervention in human affairs 
would violate His own integrity, in that it would 
be done only through a violation of His orderly 
scheme of developing the race. 

Yet we have seen how important it is for 
humanity to break certain established laws of 
life in order to execute more important laws. 
We do not feel that we have done violence to 
God when we change the course of a river, that 
it may render a larger service to the world. By 


YSLRAIT IS) THE: GATE” 205 


our faith and ingenuity mountains have been 
removed and cast into the sea, thereby connect- 
ing two oceans. And if it is possible for us to 
impose our wills upon nature, why should we 
deny to our Father the same right ? 

It is a very old-fashioned belief that influences 
our thought as we study this parable of the 
fruitless fig-tree. This is one of the unfinished 
stories of the Master. We do not learn whether 
the tree bore fruit or not. Perhaps it had been 
allowed to go too long as a mere ornament to 
the vineyard. But we may be assured that the 
vine-dresser did his best to put figs on that 
tree. 

So all this pruning and digging, while not a 
very pleasant experience, was a distinct compli- 
ment to the fig-tree. The vine-dresser would 
not have gone to the bother if the tree had not 
been worth saving. 

Now and again in the experience of some man 
who has never put back into civilization even a 
fraction of one per cent of that which he had 
taken out, living easily and carelessly in the 
midst of problems for which he might have 
helped find a remedy, he is suddenly brought 
up on a short tether and given a stern examina- 
tion—enough to demonstrate to him that life, 
as most people have to live it, is a very real and 
serious institution ! 

We will do well not to attempt to read into 
everybody’s misfortunes the outworking of a 


206 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


pruning policy. Rather than have that happen, 
in our scheme of thinking, we would better dis- 
believe that such procedure ever occurs at all. 
When Jesus was asked, as the little company 
passed a blind man: “Master, who did sin, this 
man or his parents, that he was born blind ?” 
Jesus replied: “‘ Neither.” 

But occasionally it seems as if some highly 
potential fig-tree is undergoing a pruning. If one 
realizes that one has been suddenly and unac- 
countably put through a period of serious stress, 
it might be worth looking into, anyhow. 

However that may be, it is an assured fact 
that the best-lived lives are constantly eliminat- 
ing the forces and influences which cramp and 
fetter them. They may not actually pluck out 
their eyes and cut off their hands, but they con- 
trive to dispose of the tendencies in their lives 
which rob them of their mental peace, keep 
them awake nights, and threaten to make their 
old age wretched with blistering memories. 

And the proper manner of proceeding to such 
elimination is by forcing the objectionable ten- 
dencies out through the introduction of a new 
ideal, new interests, new inspiration. Unless 
something greater and more powerful than these 
evil influences comes in, it is reasonably certain 
the evil influences will not stay out. 

Jesus treats of this matter in his parable of 
the man who had violently expelled an evil 
spirit from his life. He did it by a stern decision 


PSLRA AIS) THE: GATE 207 


that he had had enough of that annoyance, and 
proposed to be forever done with it. Perhaps it 
was New Year’s Day. 

But he made no arrangements for filling that 
vacancy in his life with something better; so a 
little later, when the evil tendency (which Jesus 
personifies in this story as a rational being) de- 
cided that he could now safely move back in, 
he stealthily approached his erstwhile lodgings, 
noted that the room was empty, swept, and gar- 
nished, and entered, bringing with him “‘seven 
other spirits more wicked than himself.” 

It is to be doubted if a man can depend upon 
any “elimination” programme to purge his life 
of the things that menace his peace. He may 
exorcise his “evil spirits” and sweep and gar- 
nish his soul, but it is only the intrusion of a 
great ideal that can guarantee against their re- 
turn. 

A mother, coming unannounced.to visit her 
son at college, found objectionable pictures on 
the walls of his room. She made no comment, 
but, upon returning home, expressed to him a 
beautifully framed reproduction of Hoffman’s 
“The Boy Christ.’’ And because his mother had 
sent the picture, the youth hung it on the wall. 
Presently a friend came in, noted the absence 
of the risqué pictures, and inquired why they 
were down, to which the student replied: “‘I 
couldn’t have them up there beside him!” 

Every conversion of a life of evil impulses and 


208 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


sordid desires, through the acceptance of the 
Christian way of living, is but a variant of that 
story. The other things come down and out 
because we can’t have them there beside him. 


CHAPTER X 
ext ARE THE LIGHT: OF THE WORLD? 


HE confidence and courage with which 
Jesus accepted his cup of tragedy was 
predicated upon the willingness and ca- 

pacity of his followers, then and thereafter, to 
the whole world, to carry the truth he had re- 
vealed. 

Without doubt, the highest honor ever con- 
ferred upon humanity was implied by the calm 
serenity wherewith the Master was clothed as 
he issued the great commission authorizing his 
friends to go out and build a new civilization by 
preaching the gospel to every creature. 

Not until we have studied Jesus’ life, with 
this particular quest in mind, can we realize the 
extent of his faith in the valor of the individual. 
Sometimes he was frankly disappointed. More 
often he seemed delightfully satisfied. A cen- 
turion, with exquisite courtesy, reports that a 
member of his household is seriously ill; that he 
believed Jesus could effect a restoration; that 
it was quite unnecessary the Master should 
take the time and trouble to go to his house. 
“Speak!” begged the officer, “for I also am a 


209 


210 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


man in authority. I say to one ‘Go!’ and he 
goeth, and to another ‘Come!’ and he cometh. 
Say, in a word, and my servant shall be healed.” 

Such experiences must have been quite heart- 
ening to this divine interpreter, who realized 
how soon he would be required to delegate his 
stupendous task to men whose faith in him must 
serve as their chief qualification for the accept- 
ance of that trust. There is, too, a certain pecu- 
liar significance in the reply of Jesus to this 
Roman soldier. If he had been thinking of his 
future apostolate mostly as a body of men in 
whose veins coursed the rich legacy of Abraham, 
it now seemed possible that the Gentile also pos- 
sessed the mind and heart to appreciate a power- 
producing revelation of divinity. In the Mas- 
ter’s rejoinder, “‘I have not found so great faith; 
no, not in Israel,” it was as if he saluted the 
brave adventurers of alien blood who, in the on- 
coming centuries, would comprise the vanguard 
of his advancing kingdom of the soul. 

Another incident of the sort must not be over- 
looked as we attempt to discover Jesus’ attitude 
toward the consecrated faith of other than “his 
own” people. It was during a tour along the 
coast near Tyre and Sidon that a Canaanitish 
woman besought him in behalf of an invalid 
daughter. It should be remembered that the 
racial consciousness of the disciples was very 
strong. They were all Jews, and frankly con- 
temptuous of aliens. It annoyed them that a 


“THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” art 


woman of Canaan, daughter of a despised race, 
should presume to ask favors. 

For the purpose of teaching his company a 
special lesson in “internationalism,” Jesus paid 
no attention to the woman’s cries. But she, un- 
daunted by his apparent indifference, continued 
to follow along, loudly begging for a hearing. 
The disciples advised: “Send her away; for she 
crieth after us.”’ (“‘Us,” indeed !) 

Adopting the customary phraseology of the 
narrow-minded orthodox Jew, Jesus, affecting 
sternness, said to her: ‘I am not come but unto 
the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’? But the 
woman’s faith surmounted even this obstacle of 
the apparent racial selfishness of the man whom 
she still considered an interpreter of the divine. 
She continued to beg for help. 

Again he put her faith to severe test in the 
statement: “It is not meet to take the children’s 
bread and cast it to dogs.”’ He was using one of 
the pet phrases of proud Judaism. Aliens were 
always “dogs.” 

“Truth, Lord,” she replied; “yet the dogs 
eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s 
table.” 

Perhaps he was unable to bear any more of 
this, even to teach his disciples an object lesson 
in generosity toward aliens. Evidently he had 
wished them to observe how strangely the con- 
ventional Jewish policy on this subject would 
sound, coming from his own lips. ‘‘O woman,” 


7 ie) THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


he cried, “‘great is thy faith! Be it unto thee 
even as thou wilt!” It may be believed that 
internationalism made some gains that day. 

Of course the immediate responsibility for the 
spread of the new gospel, upon Jesus’ retirement 
from the earthly scene, would devolve upon the 
men whom he had ordained. They had not 
chosen him; he had chosen them. The new pro- 
gramme of life would presently be entirely in 
their custody. He would not expect anything 
from the centurion, in the coin of service: the 
Canaanitish woman would return to her home, 
and he would hear from her no more. But the 
quality of their faith indicated that his message 
was possessed of an appeal unrestricted to the 
peculiar environment in which its author lived. 

In our study of the Master’s mind we must 
not miss this really remarkable faith which he 
had in the eagerness of humanity to lay hold 
upon larger spiritual facts. And the adventures 
he made, predicated upon that faith, disclose 
the complete genuineness of his belief in man- 
kind. We can afford to spend a little time re- 
viewing a specimen case. 


IT 


A delegation of learned men from Jerusalem 
had come to Capernaum by appointment, to 
confer with the Master relative to his teachings. 
There was no secret about this conference. Ap- 


“THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 213 


parently the whole north Galilean public knew 
of it, for thousands were interested. The house 
was packed to suffocation. Every doorway and 
window was blocked with anxious faces. 

At length the conference was in session. The 
stern and serious rabbis are inquiring as to 
the source of Jesus’ authority for his words and 
deeds. The inquisition was in a fair way to 
arrive, presently, at the chief point at issue— 
Jesus’ right to pardon men’s sins. 

In the midst of the discussion the ceiling 
began to crumble, and showers of mortar and 
fragments of masonry drizzled down over the 
astounded company. They looked up, and be- 
held a bed coming through the roof. The bed - 
bore a paralytic. The invalid’s friends had gath- 
ered him up, bed and all, to bring him into 
Jesus’ presence. Finding their way stopped be- 
cause of the crowd, these men, with the audacity 
usually found in combination with a vital faith, 
had hauled their burden to the housetop, 
chopped through the flat roof, and were now 
lowering their stricken friend into the confer- 
ence-room. 

The Master did not seem to regard their act 
as an unwarrantable intrusion. He may have 
welcomed it as a relief from the tiresome ques- 
tions of these pedants who had come hoping to 
entangle him and belittle him. Immediately he 
addressed the sick man: ‘Son, thy sins are for- 
given thee.” Without doubt, this had been the 


214 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


motion before the house when the roof came in. 
But how could he forgive sins? Easy enough to 
say it, of course. Anybody could say it; but 
with what authority? That was the question. 
The answer to their unspoken objection came 
quickly. Jesus faced them and said: “That ye 
may know that the son of man hath authority 
to forgive sins, I say unto thee” (turning to the 
paralytic), ‘‘arise, take up thy bed, and go unto 
thine house.” 

One wonders what will be the outcome of all 
this, if the paralytic fails to get up! Somebody 
says: ‘But that is assured. Jesus has restored 
him. He must get up!’ Oh, no; not necessarily. 
Jesus has told him to arise; but he may not do 
so for any one of several reasons. He may think 
he is not able.. He has come to consider himself 
entirely out of commission physically. Or he 
may be so overcome by the excitement that he 
will be too embarrassed and confused to risk 
making a spectacle of himself before this gaping 
crowd. Or, sensing the dispute, he may not care 
to brook the theologians’ wrath by becoming ar- 
biter of a case which they must lose, if he obeys. 


But here is a moment fraught with very seri- | 


ous consequences. The Master has given this 
sick man a new lease on life. He is no longer 
paralyzed. He may now get up and go his way, 
But if, for any reason whatsoever, he does not 
get up and go his way, Jesus will be denounced 
as a pretender. So; for this one little moment 


lo LiGhH WOneLHEeWORDD? “ors 


the Master was willing to make the adventure of 
resting his case with the man on the cot. If 
he gets up, shoulders his bed, and starts home, 
Jesus has authority to forgive sins. If he fails 
to get up—either because he is too timid or too 
stupid or too faithless—Jesus does not have the 
authority he claims. 

There is a sense in which the divine authority 
of our Lord is perpetually referred, for practical 
verification, to the individuals whose lives have 
been transformed by way of the benefits accru- 
ing to them through the power of Christianity. 
In every generation persons who have become 
beneficiaries of this rehabilitating energy are test 
cases, whether they relish the distinction or not. 
When told to arise and do his will, there is a 
great deal more involved in the admonition than 
appears on the surface. A refusal to obey is 
equivalent to placing weapons in the hands of 
the forces which would find themselves advan- 
taged, in material gains, by a frustration of the 
truth that Jesus taught. 

To-day large groups of people profess that 
their lives have been made over by the trans- 
forming power of Jesus’ teachings. Once having 
made such a declaration, it is as if the self-con- 
fessedly redeemed had been wheeled into a 
clinic to be examined by a board of physicians 
avowedly unfriendly to the healer who claims 
to possess the power to mend lives. Say the 
critics to the patient: “Feel any stronger?” 


216 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


Ves,” “Think ‘you: could) walk?) 7 As= 
suredly !”” “Why don’t you?” 

At this charge the patient rises on one elbow 
and remarks, with some warmth: “Jesus has 
healed me, I tell you. He has wonderful power! 
He is the great physician! You should concede 
him that title.’ But the critics only smile and 
say: ‘‘Let us see you move your hand. No, not 
that one. We know you are sound on that side 
—common honesty, frugality, thrift, and all the 
rest of that category of staple virtues. Move the 
other hand—the paralyzed hand! We want to 
know whether you would be able to lift a cup of 
cold water to a stranger’s lips. Move your foot! 
‘We would like to see whether you could walk on 
an errand of mercy!” 

“Then you are scoffers and infidels?” de- 
mands the patient. 

“Perhaps,” reply the doctors. “We are won- 
dering about that ourselves. But now that your 
ereat physician has told you to arise, if you do 
not he may proclaim his power and you may 
profess your cure, but we will not believe. In 
other words, and bluntly, if you don’t arise, you 
can’t arise !”’ 

With all the faults and failures of the people 
who have attempted to demonstrate the power 
of Christ, it is in justification of his faith in 
humanity’s willingness to prove his case that 
Christian civilization is the most important fact 
in the world to-day. 


“THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 217 


One of the most touching episodes in the story 
of Jesus’ trial before Pilate occurs when the 
prisoner, having been invited into the procura- 
tor’s office for a private conference, waives his 
opportunity to plead his own cause because he 
is more concerned about his judge’s personal at- 
titude toward him. 

We do not linger to rehearse the event, al- 
though it well deserves all the attention the 
Christian can put upon it. To lend one’s imagi- 
nation to this event it is easy to construct a 
unique and dramatic scene. Jesus has been 
asked inside. The brawling mob, which would 
have considered it defilement to cross the thresh- 
old, was left behind. The centurion, with much 
rattling of armor, had directed the way for the 
Galilean, and had closed the door from without. 
The two young men faced each other. Each was 
profoundly interested in the other, for they had 
never met before. They were, each in his own 
peculiar sphere, the most important figures in 
the public eye of Jerusalem that day. 

For some moments neither moved nor spoke. 
The Roman was ruddy of face and garishly at- 
tired. He was well fed and wore an air of pros- 
perity. The Galilean was pale, fatigued, un- 
kempt, and showing signs of the rough treatment 
he had experienced at the hands of the mob. 

So this was the king! It may be imagined 
that for a moment Pilate’s lip curled in con- 
tempt. He may have been in the very act of 


218 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


summoning the soldier to lead the prisoner forth 
again. But something in the Master’s eyes 
moved him to a sudden interest. With consid- 
erable deference, he inquired: “Art thou a 
king?” 

Here is the Galilean’s chance to explain to 
Pontius Pilate the real facts about his ministry. 
He has an opportunity to recite the fundamen- 
tals of the Christian creed, to wit: If you would 
live nobly, you must love deeply. If you would 
be great, you must serve. If you would be for- 
given your mistakes, you must forgive others 
their mistakes. It is only the life of the soul that 
matters; keep your soul alive. 

But, strangely enough, Jesus spends this criti- 
cal moment, given him for self-defense, in at- 
tempting to find out how Pilate, himself, felt 
about this matter of “kingship.” “‘Sayest thiou 
this of thyself,” inquired the Master, “‘or did 
others tell it thee ?”’ 

Jesus had so much faith in humanity’s ability 
to see the reasonableness of his gospel that he 
wondered if, perhaps, this Roman procurator 
might be persuaded to understand. And if, in 
such unlikely quarters, the Man of Galilee 
sought human faith in the new gospel, it is not 
difficult to understand how he would say, ear- 
nestly and sincerely, to his ordained disciples: 
‘““Ye are the light of the world.” 


“THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 219 


Ill 


Sometimes the question has been raised by 
thoughtful people why Jesus, having said of him- 
self, “‘I am the light of the world,” would apply 
the same phrase to his messengers. After reflec- 
tion one decides that this was entirely logical. 
If they were now to become the custodians of 
this energy they were, in very truth, “the light 
of the world.” 

To make doubly sure that they realized the 
importance of their commission, he added: “Ye 
are the salt of the earth.” Nobody to-day can 
catch the full significance of that statement un- 
less he knows the story of salt. This indispensa- 
ble commodity was scarce and precious in Jesus’ 
day. Practically all the salt was brought, at the 
expense of long journeys, from certain natural 
deposits. It was so difficult to find that at one 
time the Roman soldiers were paid in little disks 
of salt. Indeed, our word “salary” is thus de- 
rived from the Latin salus. Many have thought 
that Rome’s chief, if not the only, reason for 
being interested in Palestine was due to the old 
caravan route from Joppa to Engedi, on the 
Dead Sea, where salt was to be had in abun- 
dance. But for Rome’s desire to control that 
caravan trail, it is unlikely the Jews would have 
become tributary to the Czsars. 

However that may be, salt was precious. 


220 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


Jesus said to these men who were shortly to be- 
come responsible for the spread of his truth: 
“Ye are the salt of the earth.” And then, he 
added: ‘‘ But if the salt lose its saltness, where- 
with shall it be salted ? It is henceforth good for 
nothing.” There was only one thing that salt 
could ever be—and that was salt. Extremely 
valuable so long as it remained salt. But when 
it had lost its saltness, it was done. After the 
chloride of sodium has all been washed out of 
salt, what remains is a liability rather than an 
asset. 

The same type of caution attends the state- 
ment: “Ye are the light of the world.” “Men 
do not light a candle,” observed the Master, 
“‘and put it under a bushel, but on a candle- 
stick.”” Some illuminations are so small they 
have been effectually concealed behind a silver 
dollar. “‘A city that is set on a hill cannot be 
hid. Let your light so shine before men that they 
may see your good works.” 

Many men of Jerusalem could be found who 
would be almost sure to misinterpret these 
words. The customary method of letting one’s 
light shine was thoroughly objectionable to Je- 
sus. Some of the most important functions of 
the Christian’s life were to be exercised in strict- 
est secrecy. There was, for example, the privi- 
lege of prayer. The Pharisee prayed openly on 
the street, loudly and lengthily, in the hope and 
belief that he would be observed. He was not 


“THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 221 


particularly concerned about encouraging others 
to do the like. It was not for the purpose of 
making prayer popular that the Pharisee made 
a public exhibition of his supplications. He 
wished other people to note that here came a 
man of great piety. 

Jesus grows very stern as he deals with the 
problems involved in the attempt of small-cali- 
bred souls to use their religion for purposes of 
self-advertisement. It is with extreme difficulty 
that we can understand an age or country where 
the most prominent men in public life moved 
majestically along the street, eyes aloft, finger- 
tip to finger-tip, audibly reciting the sonorous 
psalms of praise. And we are inclined to wonder 
if the picture was not overdrawn which features 
the Pharisee in that incident which begins: 
“Two men went up into the temple to pray.” 
For, you will remember, this man prayed thus 
with himself: “Lord, I thank thee that I am 
not as other men.” But if we will strip the scene 
of its local color, it is not so difficult to observe 
this thanks-that-I-am-not-as-other-men prayer 
cropping out even in our own devotions. 

The ideal prayer, according to Jesus, was a 
strictly private affair. The devotee should closet 
himself in the sanctuary of his own room, shut 
the door, and pray in secret. His Father, hear- 
ing him in secret, would reward him openly. 
Jesus, having become persuaded that men were 
not to be divinely dealt with in groups, but as 


222 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


individuals, became equally sure that human- 
ity’s approach to God must be made by men 
as individuals. ‘They were not to supplicate as 
committees or organizations, but as souls. 

The implications of this theme to-day are of 
considerable importance. Civilization has de- 
pended so much upon socialization, that it is 
easy for the individual to lose sight of himself. 
He comes to disregard the significance of any 
relationship beyond the corporate groupings of 
society. He encounters the danger of becoming 
incapable of any large degree of mental or moral 
independence. 

There is a mental disease known to psycho- 
therapy as “agoraphobia”—the fear of open 
spaces. The victim of this obsession is serene, 
poised, and contented of mind in a crowd. So 
long as he is under the shadow of tall buildings, 
under a roof, in a train or a boat, or otherwise 
rubbing elbows with humans, he is normal. Let 
him be isolated from the pack for a moment, and 
he goes at once into a state of nervous stam- 
pede. He belongs to the pack and must stay in 
the pack. He has an abnormal development of 
the sense of tribal dependence. 

Many people are afflicted with this malady 
who have never explained their case to a neu- 
rologist. Agoraphobia is so common a disorder 
that not many persons are able to endure their 
own society for any considerable length of time 
without finding their minds either so turbulent, 


‘THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 223 


so unaccountably depressed, or so stupidly un- 
interesting that almost any human association 
seems preferable to their own. 

Curiously enough, along with this agorapho- 
bia, which dreads detachment from the crowd, 
comes an unfathomable fear of the crowd. The 
mind that is unable to deal with itself alone is 
beset by fear of the very pack indispensable to 
its existence. ‘‘What will they say ?” is the up- 
permost query in the mind of this unfortunate, 
because, since he dares not be alone, he 1s under 
necessity to keep in the good graces of the 
crowd. He is obliged to be in it and of it at all 
times. He cannot risk its displeasure or aban- 
donment of him. He must exercise the utmost 
vigilance to avoid doing or saying anything that 
might call attention to some distinction or dif- 
ference of mind, mood, or temper existing in his 
own case. His dread of being caught out alone 
with an idea, an impulse, a motive, not com- 
monly shared by the mob, requires him to keep 
his own personality well under cover. 

It may be presumed that he has, or once had, 
a candle. Perhaps it was expected of him that 
he was to become, in his own way, and to the 
best of his ability, a light to the world. But his 
light has long since been eclipsed. 

Jesus offers practical counsel to this man con- 
cerning the processes by which he may recover 
his lost individuality. Let him deal with himself 
alone at stated times. Let him enter into his 


224. THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


closet and, when he has shut the door, pray to 
his Father in secret. The supreme value of this 
counsel is realized only at the point of our un- 
derstanding that the greatest tests and most 
critical experiences of life are events with which 
the individual, himself, must deal unaided by 
any fellow-mortal. One’s last earthly experience 
is bound to be the loneliest of them all. It will 
be important in that moment to have had pre- 
vious acquaintance—not as a member of a com- 
mittee but as a personal friend—with the spirit 
of Him to whom we go, at length, alone. 

In the same spirit, Jesus has a word to say 
about the processes of charity. Almsgiving, 
properly administered, should be so quietly per- 
formed that the donor’s own left hand would 
not be aware what the right hand had been do- 
ing. There is a peculiar psychology involved 
here, which baffles explanation. Do your good 
deed and keep it a secret. You will achieve a 
great deal of satisfaction. Tell somebody you 
did it, and you divide your joy in half. Tell a 
dozen, and the joy is all gone. Whoever wishes 
to elucidate this mystery is welcome to the ma- 
terials. One simply knows that it is true. 

Kindhearted Mr. Jones has met his old col- 
lege chum on the street. The old college chum 
has been in great misfortune. He has been ill 
and poor and is now out of work. Moreover, he 
is having trouble making business connections. 
Perhaps it is because he is shabby, shaggy, and 


Pie GH brOn rh RaWORLD i225 


discouraged. Jones goes down into his pocket 
and produces a roll of banknotes. He instructs 
his needy friend to buy new clothes, visit a bar- 
ber, secure a comfortable room and sleep for 
fifteen hours, eat a few square meals, and then 
come around to the office. Together they would 
see what could be done about a new position for 
him. 

All day Jones goes about in a sort of golden 
mist. Never had he done anything in his life 
that gave him this particular kind of spiritual 
satisfaction. In the evening his closest friend 
and neighbor drops in for a call. Jones decides 
to share his little confidence. He thinks he can 
report it in such a manner that the emphasis 
will rest upon the fact that he had happened to 
meet his old chum, in his hour of dire emergency 
—strange coincidence, and all that. So Jones 
tells the story; and even while he is telling it, he 
feels the ecstatic joy of the thing gradually ooz- 
ing out! Why? Who knows? But it is true. 
One can depend upon whatever Jesus said about 
these practical considerations. He was an astute 
and infallible psychologist. 

Doubtless Jesus would rejoice in the story, re- 
cently told, of two men in a Western city, rival 
manufacturers of the same product. So sharp 
was their competition that their personal rela- 
tions became badly strained. For years they 
had merely bowed as they met. Each felt that 
the other was his enemy. One of these factories 


226 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


was located near the bank of a large river. The 
river swelled to a devastating flood one night, 
and the factory was swept away. Next morning 
the ruined man’s competitor heard of his rival’s 
misfortune, and hurried to the scene of the dis- 
aster, where he found his enemy sitting upon a 
heap of rubbish, with his face in his hands. 
Glancing up when saluted, the dejected man 
recognized his competitor, and said: “‘ Well, you 
can have it all your own way now! Everything 
I had is gone!” 

“So I see,” responded the other. “‘I came to 
tell you that you are welcome to use my plant 
to fill your present orders while you are rebuild- 
ing. You may pay me whatever that is worth to 
you when you are on your feet again. You may 
have the use of my name on your paper at the 
bank. And if there is anything else I can do for 
you, in this time of your misfortune, call on me.” 

Doubtless Jesus would rejoice in that story, 
but he would think it a much better story if 
only he and two others knew it. That must have 
been a great day for this man who came to the 
relief of his erstwhile enemy. It must have been 
a wonderful experience—until he told it. One 
wishes—he was such a very fine fellow—that he 
had kept it to himself. It would have become a 
great comfort to him in his old age. 

In Jesus’ time men fasted. Sometimes the 
self-abnegation was practised more or less per- 
functorily. In many cases it was done sys- 


SHE  LIGHTORXTHE WORLD’ 227 


tematically and with great thoroughness—so 
thoroughly, indeed, that the celebrant grew 
thin, pale, and haggard. You could tell how 
good a man was by his face. There were no rosy 
and dimpled saints. A drawn, colorless skin 
stretched over obtrusive cheek-bones, was a sign 
of piety. That being the case, it had become 
quite customary for men to distort their faces 
into lugubrious masks of misery, in the hope of 
receiving the attention due the righteous. 

The Master had nothing to say against fast- 
ing. But he told his disciples that if they pro- 
posed to fast they should anoint their heads, 
wash their faces, and “appear not to fast,” if 
they hoped to derive any spiritual benefit from 
the exercise. 

Now and then one still sees some sour-visaged 
saint who, if he really has come into the abiding 
joy which is one of the delightful perquisites of 
a consecrated life, appears to have his inner 
happiness under a most excellent control. But 
Christianity has made some splendid gains at 
this point. The cases of modern Christians who 
speak in requial tones, with the corners of their 
mouths drawn down, are so infrequently en- 
countered that one wishes certain other phases 
of the gospel had come to be understood as well 
and practised as widely as this admonition: 
‘Appear not unto men to fast.” 

At this point it is quite worth while to note 
the additional implications of Jesus’ counsel to 


228 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


men that they should not attempt to appear 
otherwise than as they are. Spiritual develop- 
ment would work startling transformations upon 
men’s lives; but not “by taking thought” could 
one add a cubit to one’s physical stature. 

The pitiful endeavor of many people to sub- 
merge their own individuality and become but 
members of a social organism rather than spiri- 
tual units—each capable of living an indepen- 
dent life—has led them to resort to all manner 
of devices to destroy their identities. No longer 
do they disfigure their faces that they may ap- 
pear unto men to fast; for fasting is not the issue 
of the day. But, in so far as they can, these mis- 
guided people make themselves over into the 
semblance of something other than they are. 
This is achieved largely through imitation. 

If a man examine himself pitilessly, he may 
discover that a larger territory of his life than 
he has supposed is a mere mosaic made up of 
the odds and ends of other people’s “ personali- 
ties,” deftly pieced together to serve his own 
purposes. He may also discover, with some 
chagrin—if not terror—that he has practised a 
definite programme of being something else than 
he is until it is quite difficult for him to express 
his own personality at all. The “‘myself” seems 
to be irretrievably lost. 

Disappointed with their failure to capitalize 
their own talents quickly, many people have 
been led to make curious experiments with their 


“THE LIGHT OF THE. WORLD” 229 


physiognomy. They seem bent upon mending 
their faces, lured by the fatuous hope of express- 
ing more “personality” by the alteration of 
their physical appearance, when they ought to 
know that every time they make yet another 
change of this sort, they only damage their iden- 
tity by that much! 

Jesus wants his light-bearers to learn to deal 
with themselves alone. The illumination they 
give forth will be a reflected light, but it must 
be reflected directly! It is to proceed without 
interference from the Source, and be reflected 
without interference from the individual. Hence 
the high necessity of the light-bearer’s immedi- 
ate contacts with his Father. Hence, also, the 
importance of his living a life of sufficient self- 
containment that he may be sure of that per- 
sonal relationship between himself and his spiri- 
tual Author. To the fullest realization of that 
bond, it is imperative that he not only derive his 
chief help “‘in secret,” but give certain expres- 
sions of his own spiritual power by processes 
known only to himself and his God. If, in the 
exercise of his faith and service, he experiences 
sorrows, losses, and disappointments, let him 
keep his own counsel and show a smiling face. 


IV 


Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon 
Jesus’ belief in and expectation of the individual 


230 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


as a bearer of the light. We have been in grave 
danger of missing the importance of this admon- 
ition in these days, when almost every human 
activity 1s accomplished, by mass-movements 
to which the individual is related somewhat 
as a blade of grass is related to a meadow. 

The fact is not without significance that no 
two of us are alike. There has never been a per- 
son like you in the world before, and there will 
not be another. Each human personality, in- 
stinctively sensing this peculiarity within him- 
self, and noting it in others, is passionately eager 
to discover what it is that others possess of 
which he is in ignorance. Our Father has pro- 
jected Himself into our lives in such a manner 
that no two of us have received exactly the 
Same spiritual bequest; and each individual is 
concerned to know what it is that others have 
received which he, himself, does not own or 
know. This may be said to be the secret of all 
human relationships—the striving of each to 
see the inner light possessed by the others. 

But you will not freely reveal to me the pecu- 
liar radiance which is your unique heritage, un- 
less I reciprocate the favor by disclosing to you 
the light that has been vouchsafed to me. Men 
who seem unable to win and retain close friend- 
ships fail at the point of their unwillingness to 
reveal the light projected into their souls. Usu- 
ally the reason is that they have so cluttered 
their own personalities with the imitated graces 


“THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD” 231 


and virtues of their contemporaries that they 
have no way of reflecting any other than the 
dim borrowed lights of the persons they have 
sought to pattern. 

The practical nature of this counsel applies 
with full force to the attempted achievement of 
success in any of life’s engagements. The man 
who becomes a noted actor is he who expresses 
himself, and the peculiar mental and spiritual 
gifts that are his, with the utmost of “natural- 
ness.” The writer who can make other people 
see exactly what are his own personal reactions 
to the experiences and phenomena of life can be 
depended upon to secure readers. Whoever, 
without artifice or restraint, reveals himself to 
his friends, needs never lack friends. 

But all this light-bearing is predicated upon 
the ability of the individual to clear the way be- 
tween himself and the Source of his light. What- 
ever stands between him and his God must be 
disposed of. The slightest remorse over an in- 
justice done a fellow-human, which one has 
made no effort to repair, will make the human- 
divine contact very difficult. Jesus deals with 
this situation in this statement: “If thou bring 
thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest 
that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave 
there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; 
first be reconciled to thy brother, and then 
come and offer thy gift.” 

Frequent blunders, due to our human frailty, 


232 THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


will require us to plead for a restoration to the 
confidence of an offended Father; nor may we 
hope for a reopening of the spiritual path to 
Him, through the consciousness of His pardon, 
until we have also reopened the impeded ways 
between ourselves and our fellows. In other 
words, I may not have more light projected into 
me until I have cleared the way for the reflection 
of that light. It is not a light that I may or can 
absorb! Only as I reflect it may I receive it! 
To reopen the way to the Source, therefore, 
when by reason of neglect or wilfulness it has 
been closed, it becomes necessary for me to clear 
the obstacles which prevent me from reflecting 
light. “‘If ye forgive men their trespasses,” said 
Jesus, in dealing with this problem, “‘your Heav- 
enly Father will also forgive you; but if ye for- 
give not men their trespasses, neither will your 
Father forgive your trespasses.”’ 

What honest men most desire is more light. 
Obviously there is but one Source from which it 
proceeds. Nothing is more clearly demonstrated 
than the fact that God is willing to disclose more 
light in exact proportion to men’s ability to 
make use of it. Now and again He seems to 
project into certain chosen souls brighter rays 
than had previously been revealed. It is cus- 
tomary for the contemporaries of these privi- 
leged light-bearers to doubt the validity or use 
of these new rays. Forever, we are emulating 
the wisdom and fidelity of men who, in former 


pln LIGHT (ORR THE “WORLD? 233 


times, served as light-bearers to their kind. We 
remember that they were bitterly persecuted by 
a misunderstanding public. Too rarely oe It 
occur to us that the despised and defamed “ 
centric” or “heretic” of the hour may eventu- 
ally be recognized—when it is quite too late 
to do him honor—as a messenger bearing a new 
fact to the world. The situation could not be 
better stated than in Jesus’ remark: “‘Ye build 
the tombs of the prophets and adorn the sepul- 
chres of the righteous, saying: ‘If we had been 
in the days of our fathers, we would not have 
been partakers with them in the blood of the 
prophets.’”’ 

The bequest of heavenly light is a legacy still 
proceeding to the sons of men. In that majestic 
prayer which Jesus offered on the eve of his 
tragedy, after having begged that their courage 
and faith might be increased who were to be- 
come his immediate successors in the task of 
teaching the world his gospel, he considered the 
unborn torch-bearers of the future. “Neither 
pray I for these alone, but for them also which 
shall believe on me through their word. I will 
that they, also . . . may behold the glory which 
thou hast given me.”’ 

It is a stirring thought that Jesus offered a 
prayer for you and me; that he considered the 
bearers of the torch who, in ages to come, would 
be as necessary to the continuity of his kingdom 
as were Peter, James, and John. 


234. THESE SAYINGS OF MINE 


It is not only a stirring thought but a stagger- 
ing responsibility. Once a man becomes con- 
scious of that delegated trust, he lives a haunted 
life; and there will be no further rest for him 
until he accepts and fulfils his commission. “Ye 
have not chosen me,” said Jesus. “I have 
chosen you!” And every man who has been 
thus honored is aware of his high office. He shall 
have no peace of mind or satisfaction of heart 
unless he consents to carry on. 

I think I see some carmine-stained footprints 
on the path that we must tread who have be- 
come conscious of our appointment as torch- 
bearers in our own generation. I[ think I hear 
the Master saying to us, as he said to his col- 
leagues: ““Whoever would be great among you 
must minister; and whoever would be the great- 
est must be servant of all.” There may be some 
other way for some other people, but there can 
never be any other way for us. 












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